"I wish already that our heads were turned homeward, and that we
had done the great tour, and had it not to do."
There was also much of pathos in his speech at the Lotos Club in 1874,
where he said:--
"One of the kind wishes expressed for me is long life. Let anything
be asked for me except that. Let us live hard, work hard, go at a
good pace, get to our journey's end as soon as possible; then let
the post-horse get the shoulder out of the collar. . . . I have
lived long enough to feel like the old post-horse,--very thankful
as the end draws near. . . . Long life is the last thing that I
desire. It may be that as one grows older one acquires more and
more the painful consciousness of the difference between what ought
to be done and what can be done, and sits down more quietly when
one gets the wrong side of fifty to let others start up to do for
us things we cannot do ourselves. But it is the highest pleasure
that a man can have who has (to his own exceeding comfort) turned
down the hill at last, to believe that younger spirits will rise up
after him and catch the lamp of truth--as in the old lamp-bearing
race of Greece--out of his hand before it expires, and carry it on
to the goal with swifter and more even feet."
He did not live long after his return from America. He took cold Advent
Sunday, and soon was down with the sickness from which he never
recovered. His wife was dangerously ill at the same time, and he made
himself seriously worse by leaving his bed once or twice to go to her,
where he said "heaven was." To this wife he had been a devoted lover for
over thirty years, and retained to the last moment his chivalric
devotion. To his children and his servants he was the ideal parent and
master, and to every one who had known him personally the ideal friend.
His parish was only a large family, where he was held in like honor and
esteem. Would that we all in these restless times might find some of the
secret springs of his life, and thus make, like him,
"Life, death, and that vast forever
One grand, sweet song"!
His wife remained for a little time to mourn his loss, although he
believed at the time of his death that she would not live, and spoke of
the supreme blessing of not being divided in the hour of death from her
he had loved so well. She lived to tell to the world, in a touching and
tender manner, the story of that life of "deep and strange sorrows," as
he once expressed it; and then followed him, gladly, into the rest that
remains for all who toil earnestly and worthily as he had done. It was
proposed to bury him in Westminster Abbey, but agreeably to his own
wishes in the matter he was buried in the little churchyard at Eversley,
where he had familiar acquaintance with every tree and shrub, and where
the poor, to whom he had been so much while living, could still feel him
near to them though dead. Upon the white marble cross are carved the
words, "God is Love,"--the words which had been the central thought of
all his eloquent and effective preaching, and the words by which he had
shaped his whole life; for, in imitation of that God he so reverenced,
he had made his life one of active love and helpfulness toward the whole
brotherhood of man. Few men of loftier aims, higher purposes, purer
spirit, have ever lived; few men who fulfilled the priestly office in so
high and conscientious a manner have been known in our day; few
reformers who have been so aggressive, and yet so temperate in action;
few men personally so loved by those who knew him intimately. Soft be
the turf at Eversley upon him, and sweet the sighing of her summer winds
about his grave!
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