Hamlet Clark's Letters Home 165 



need not go near the poor, but to those who are zealous in their 

 calling, it does not come in the shape of an option. It presents 

 itself to them with a face of duty, and like gallant soldiers they 

 obey her voice, regardless of consequences to themselves. 



In that command, on that field, Hamlet Clark found his 

 death. His constitution, never strong, gave way under the strain, 

 and disease set in which finally disabled him, and compelled him 

 to abandon the scene of his labours. 



He retired to Rhyl, in Wales, where it was hoped that 

 country air and abstinence from work might restore his health. 

 There he passed two years of suffering. Burke speaking of poor 

 Marie Antoinette says, that "we are interested that creatures 

 made to suffer should suffer well." Assuredly Hamlet Clark suffered 

 well. The courage, modesty, and piety with which he faced ap- 

 proaching death is to us beautiful beyond expression. The coolness 

 and Christian composure with which he made ready to die, reveals 

 itself in every line of some letters which we received from him at a 

 time when he knew that death was not far off One or two short 

 quotations may do some reader good, as they did us. On 14th 

 of last April he wrote : — 



" I have just been reading my Greek Testament — ^John iii. — and have been 

 pondering inter aha over the good old man's request, ' greet the friends by name. ' 

 I suppose he meant that his friend Caius knew perfectly to whom he referred ; 

 and that (besides this) he desired a special personal greeting to be conveyed to 

 them from him. The ' by name' could mean nothing else. Well, I too offer 

 my insignificant greetings ' by name' to your breakfast table, and rejoiced much 

 to accept your very kind expression of sympathy from them all in your last 

 letter. It is strange, physiologically, how a word or two of sympathy, when 

 one quite believes in it, has such real power to help to triumph over pain and 

 weakness. Even now the mind has vast power over the body ; what will it be 

 hereafter ? Why, this wretched body of ours will be wretched no longer ; but 



the able and willing servant of the intelligence. Thanks for the offer of • 's 



book. Don't gizie me anything, it is of no use, for my time is short ; but the 

 more you lend me to read the better. I can''t work now much, and hard study 

 seems more and more impossible — a fortiori, the more is chance reading, or 

 gossip, or a visit from a neighbour welcome." 



In the last letter which we received from him, 4th May, he 

 says : — 



"I have just received and been reading 'Bentham's (Pres. Linn. Soc.) Address 

 and Obituary of Past Fellows,' a sadly long list ; and it set me musing on the 

 preciousness of life, and the vastness of God's natural world of life, and the 

 possible future of the next coming, more brilliant still, world of life, and the 



