In attempting to reach by sea the port of Ribadeo, where there lay a Spanish frigate, in which he hoped to find a passage to Cadiz, another storm kept him for eight days under the peculiar hardships of a dangerous navigation in a small and crowded ship. Exhausted both in body and mind, and with a heart almost broken by the ill-treatment he had met with at the close of a long life spent in the service of his country, he landed at Vega, where, the poverty of the town offering no better accommodations, he was placed in the same room with Valdés Llanos, an old friend and relation, who had joined him in the flight, and seemed so shattered by age and fatigue, as not to be able to survive the effects of the late storm. Here Jovellanos employed his remaining strength in nursing and comforting his fellow-sufferer, till, Valdés being near his end, his friend was, according to the notions of the country, removed to another room. But death had also laid his hand on Jovellanos. Two days after completing his sixty-sixth year, he was laid in the same grave with his friend.[69]
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See Espriella’s “Letters from England.”
[2] He visited Spain in the years 1786 and 1787.
[3] The Spanish words are Ha pasado su Magestad?
[4] See [Note A], at the end of the Volume.
[5] A name denoting the plain unsophisticated Spaniard.
[6] Gentle and simple, as I find in those inexhaustible sources of intellectual delight, the Novels by the author of “Waverley,” are used by the Scottish peasants in the same manner as Noble, and Llano, (plain, simple) by the Spaniards.