And thus, nearly fifteen years after Sir Walter's death, the
debt which, within six years, he had more than half discharged, was at
last, through the value of the copyrights he had left behind him,
finally extinguished, and the small estate of Abbotsford left cleared.
Sir Walter's effort to found a new house was even less successful than
the effort to endow it. His eldest son died childless. In 1839 he went
to Madras, as Lieutenant-Colonel of the 15th Hussars, and subsequently
commanded that regiment. He was as much beloved by the officers of his
regiment as his father had been by his own friends, and was in every
sense an accomplished soldier, and one whose greatest anxiety it was
to promote the welfare of the privates as well as of the officers of
his regiment. He took great pains in founding a library for the
soldiers of his corps, and his only legacy out of his own family was
one of 100_l._ to this library. The cause of his death was his having
exposed himself rashly to the sun in a tiger-hunt, in August, 1846; he
never recovered from the fever which was the immediate consequence.
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