With such principles, he might well have hoped for happiness when he retired from public life. Religion alone can fill and satisfy the most active and capacious mind; but that its power may be felt to calm, strengthen, and support, under whatever circumstances of endurance, or of action, it must govern the character always, and be the supreme controlling principle. For this, the position of a naval officer is not favourable. War has much, in addition to the miseries and evils it directly creates, which only necessity can excuse; and there is too little leisure for reflection amidst the anxiety of early struggles, the full career of success, or the pressure of exciting and important duties.
But when external responsibilities had ceased to divert his attention from himself, his religious principles acquired new strength and exerted a more powerful influence. They guided him to peace; they added dignity to his character: and blessed his declining years with a serenity, at once the best evidence of their truth, and the happiest illustration of their power.
The quiet of domestic life offers little to be recorded; and except when public or private claims might call him for a short time from home, Lord Exmouth passed the remainder of his life at Teignmouth. He had nobly done his duty; and now enjoyed in honourable repose all that the gratitude of his country and the affection of his family could bestow. Though he knew himself liable to an attack which might be almost suddenly fatal, he dwelt on the prospect without alarm, for he rested upon that faith whose privilege it is to rise above present suffering, and to regard death itself as the gate of immortal life.
No man was more free from selfish feeling. His honours and success were valued for the sake of his family. His services and life were for his country. He had a truly English heart, and served her with entire devotedness. Nothing, indeed, could be a finer commentary than his own career upon her free and equal institutions, which, by the force of those qualities they so powerfully tend to create, had enabled him to rise from the condition of an unfriended orphan, to the dignity of the British peerage. Most painful, therefore, were his feelings, when revolt and anarchy in neighbouring countries were held up to be admired and imitated at home, until a praiseworthy desire of improvement had become a rage for destructive innovation. In a letter written at this time, Nov. 12th, 1831, after alluding to his own declining strength, he thus proceeds:—"I am fast approaching that end which we must all come to. My own term I feel is expiring, and happy is the man who does not live to see the destruction of his country, which discontent has brought to the verge of ruin. Hitherto thrice happy England, how art thou torn to pieces by thine own children! Strangers, who a year ago looked up to you as a happy exception in the world, with admiration, at this moment know thee not! Fire, riot, and bloodshed, are roving through the land, and God in his displeasure visits us also with pestilence; and, in fact, in one short year, we seem almost to have reached the climax of misery. One cannot sit down to put one's thoughts to paper, without feeling oppressed by public events, and with vain thought of how and when will the evils terminate. That must be left to God's mercy, for I believe man is at this moment unequal to the task."
He then passes to another subject. It was a trait in his character, that, through all his success, he never forgot his early friends.
"When I sat down, I intended to commence by letting you know that I have heard from —— of the last week's illness and decease of our early, and I believe almost our oldest friend, ——. He states, that he died, by God's mercy, free from pain; that his suffering was not much, and he bore it patiently, with a calm mind, keeping his senses to the last few hours. That you had paid your old friend a last visit, from which, he says, he appeared to be quite revivified; that his eyes sparkled with inward joy, and that he had asked kindly after me; that he went off at last in a kind of sleep, without a struggle, and had felt all the comfort which could be given him by a sincere old friend. I was very glad to hear that you had given him the comfort of taking leave of him, for I readily believe he ever felt for you unabated friendship, and for myself also. I think we must have known him above three-score years. I am sure you will derive pleasure from having shown him that your friendship could only end by his death."
In the last week of December, 1831, after an extraordinary exemption from such trials in his own family, he lost his youngest daughter. Little more than two months elapsed, when on the 2nd of March the warning was repeated in the almost sudden death of a grandchild, daughter of his eldest son. He communicated this event with the reflection—"We have long been mercifully spared. Death has at length entered our family, and it behoves us all to be watchful."[16]
In the spring of this year he was made Vice-Admiral of England, and was honoured at the same time with a very flattering letter from his Sovereign. This he immediately enclosed to his elder brother, to whom he knew it would give pleasure. Of the appointment itself, he remarked, "I shall have it only for one year." He held it but for a few months.
In May, Sir Israel Pellew was on his death-bed; and Lord Exmouth, though he now travelled with much difficulty and pain, could not refuse himself the melancholy satisfaction of a parting visit to one with whom he had been so closely and affectionately united. Their brother came up from Falmouth on the same errand, and on this painful occasion they all met for the last time. He then returned to his home, which he never left again.
He cherished a very strong attachment to the Church; and for more than thirty years had been a member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which he joined when the claims of the society were so little appreciated, that only principle could have prompted the step. It might therefore be expected that he would feel deep anxiety when the safety of that Church was threatened. But upon this subject his mind was firm; and in one of the last letters he ever wrote, dated August 28th, he declares his confidence in the most emphatic language. After some personal observations to the friend he was addressing, one of his old officers, he alludes to the cholera, then raging in his neighbourhood; "which," he says, "I am much inclined to consider an infliction of Providence, to show his power to the discontented of the world, who have long been striving against the government of man, and are commencing their attacks on our Church. But they will fail! God will never suffer his Church to fall; and the world will see that his mighty arm is not shortened, nor his power diminished. I put my trust in Him, and not in man; and I bless Him, that He has enabled me to see the difference between improvement and destruction."