SECTION I.

RETIREMENT FBOM PUBLIC LIFE.

Various Complimentary Letters on the Occasion—Employment of Leisure Time after a Busy Life—How my own has been occupied.

Forty years having transpired since my original entry into the Admiralty as Second Secretary, and having attained the 81st year of my age, I thought it right and proper—though in robust health, strength, and my usual activity of mind—to retire from the situation I had so long held, and to give place to a successor. Though I felt some regret in taking leave of those with many of whom I had been in daily intercourse, yet the numerous changes towards the latter part of the period, and the new faces brought with them, had, in some degree, made my parting with the old ones more a matter of course. I therefore wrote an official letter to the Board, having first communicated my intention to Lord Haddington, requesting their Lordships’ permission to resign my office, to which I received the following official reply:—

“Admiralty, January 28th, 1845.

“Sir,

“I have received and laid before my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty your letter of this date, requesting permission to resign your situation of Second Secretary to their Lordships; and I am commanded by my Lords to acquaint you that, in accepting your resignation, the Board beg to assure you of their best wishes for your health and happiness in a retirement honourably earned and naturally sought for, at your advanced age, after half a century of laborious public life.