Their example is still with us, to guide, to influence,
and to direct us. For nobility of character is a perpetual
bequest; living from age to age, and constantly tending to
reproduce its like.
"The sage," say the Chinese, "is the instructor of a hundred ages.
When the manners of Loo are heard of, the stupid become
intelligent, and the wavering determined." Thus the acted life of
a good man continues to be a gospel of freedom and emancipation to
all who succeed him:
"To live in hearts we leave behind,
is not to die."
The golden words that good men have uttered, the examples they
have set, live through all time: they pass into the thoughts and
hearts of their successors, help them on the road of life, and
often console them in the hour of death. "And the most miserable
or most painful of deaths," said Henry Marten, the Commonwealth
man, who died in prison, "is as nothing compared with the memory
of a well-spent life; and great alone is he who has earned the
glorious privilege of bequeathing such a lesson and example to his
successors!
NOTES.
(1) 'Letters of Sir Charles Bell,' p. 10.
(2) 'Autobiography of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck,' p. 179.
(3) Dean Stanley's 'Life of Dr. Arnold,' i. 151 (Ed. 1858).
(4) Lord Cockburn's 'Memorials,' pp. 25-6.
(5) From a letter of Canon Moseley, read at a Memorial Meeting held
shortly after the death of the late Lord Herbert of Lea.
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