Until the spring of 1850 Mr. Tucker kept his health and vigour to a marvellous extent for a man eighty years old,--for one too who had worked more or less hard through life from the age of fourteen or fifteen. He still attended to his India House business, not seeming to find it too much for his strength; and in the April of that year, after making a speech in Court, he was congratulated by a brother-Director upon the force and energy with which he had spoken. ‘Ah,’ he replied, ‘it is only the last flicker of the taper before it goes out.’