But she, though sadly
afflicted by such conduct, did not resent it. "If I could have
been troubled at anything, when I had the happiness of receiving
a letter from you," she writes to him on one occasion when he had
absented himself from her for long, "I should be so because you
did not name a time when I might hope to see you, the uncertainty
of which very much afflicts me." And again the poor patient wife
tells him, "Lay your commands upon me, what I am to do, and
though it be to forget my children, and the long hope I have
lived in of seeing you, yet I will endeavour to obey you; or in
memory only torment myself, without giving you the trouble of
putting you in mind that there lives such a creature as your
faithful humble servant." At length dissipation undermined his
naturally strong constitution; and for months this once most gay
and gallant man, this "noble and beautiful earl," lay dying of
that cruel disease consumption. The while such thoughts as come
to those who reason of life's vanities beset him; and as he
descended into the valley of shadows, the folly of this world's
ways was made clear to him. And repenting of his sins, he died
in peace with God and man at the age of three-and-thirty.
George Villiers second Duke of Buckingham, was not less notable
than my Lord Rochester. By turns he played such diverse parts in
life's strange comedy as that of a spendthrift and a miser, a
profligate and a philosopher, a statesman who sought the ruin of
his country, and a courtier who pandered to the pleasures of his
king.
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