In the debased state to which I am reduced, if I hooked a thirty-pound salmon, I should only pray him to get off."-- Table Talk of Shirley, pp.

222, 223.
-- His soul had always dwelt apart.

His early training did not encourage spiritual sympathy, and, except in his books, he habitually kept silence on ultimate things.

But he had always thought of them; and as he lay dying, in almost the last moments of consciousness, he repeated dearly to himself those great, those superhuman lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Macbeth between his wife's death and his own.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle; Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more.
Still later he murmured, "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ?" He died on the 20th of October, 1894, and was buried at Salcombe in his beloved Devonshire not far from his beloved sea.