Grampian Club > Leaves from my autography

LEAVES FROM UY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 91
ing. At liis paralytic attack in April 1848, lie lost
the power of speech ; latterly, he became blind. But
to the last he retained his mental faculties. He died
most peacefully on the 23d November 1849, and his
remains were interred in Dunino churchyard, in a
grave adjacent to that which contains my mother's
dust.
My father had reached his eighty -third year.
Notices of his career, with favourable estimates of
his character, appeared in the provincial and other
newspapers. Mr James Bruce, a learned journalist,
to whom my father was well known, thus concluded
a memoir of his life :
" A man of the fine intellect, the information, and the power
of commnnicating information, possessed by Mr Eoger, and
arrived at the age of fonrscore, after a life not spent at the desk
or in the Hbrary — thougli the stndies of the desk and the library
were famihar to him — bnt among men and in active business,
was truly a valuable link between the present age and a past
Avorld ; and those who have enjoyed Mr Eoger's company will,
through life, often feel themselves the richer of the stores of
knowledge, which it was certainly their own blame if they did
not gather amidst those happy conversations which made the
hours vanish like minutes."
In the Scotsman newspaper, Mr Alexander Russel,
the accomplished editor, after quoting the preceding
paragi^aph, added these words :
" To every word of this, all those who enjoyed IVIr Eoger's
society — and they were not few — will heartily subscribe; and
having thus called up before their mind's eye the old man of
strange gifts and strange ways, in whose mirth and wisdom they