Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann.

... This is Tuesday; on Friday night the King went to bed in perfect health, and rose so the next morning at his usual hour of six; he called for and drank his chocolate. At seven, for everything with him was exact and periodic, he went into the closet.... Coming from thence, his valet de chambre heard a noise; waited a moment, and heard something like a groan. He ran in, and in a small room between the closet and bedchamber he found the King on the floor, who had cut the right side of his face against the edge of a bureau, and who after a gasp expired. Lady Yarmouth was called, and sent for Princess Amelia; but they only told the latter that the King was ill and wanted her. She had been confined some days with a rheumatism, but hurried down, and saw her father extended on the bed. She is very purblind and more than a little deaf. They had not closed his eyes; she bent down close to his face, and concluded he spoke to her, though she could not hear him—guess what a shock when she found the truth. She wrote to the Prince of Wales, but so had one of the valets de chambre first. He came to town, and saw the Duke [of Cumberland] and the Privy Council. He was extremely kind at the first—and in general has behaved with the greatest propriety, dignity, and decency. He read his speech to the Council with much grace, and dismissed the guards on himself to wait on his grandfather's body. It is intimated that he means to employ the same ministers, but with reserve to himself of more authority than has lately been in fashion. The Duke of York and Lord Bute are named of the cabinet council. The late King's will is not yet opened. To-day everybody kissed hands at Leicester House, and this week, I believe, the King will go to St. James's. The body has been opened; the great ventricle of the heart had burst. What an enviable death! In the greatest period of the glory of this country, and of his reign, in perfect tranquillity at home, at seventy-seven, growing blind and deaf, to die without a pang, before any reverse of fortune, or any distasted peace, nay, but two days before a ship-load of bad news: could he have chosen such another moment?