HENSLOW'S CHARACTER 61 



them to mutual friends, of integrity, resources and inflexible 

 purpose, who will encourage and quiet them if they will 

 take his advice and use his instructions. 



To Anderson in Calcutta he also opens his heart : 



[April 22, 1861.] 



It is a grievous break-up in many ways, and I for one 

 had little idea of the enormous extent and power of Henslow's 

 influence, socially, morally and religiously, till called here 

 to his dying bed and to witness the extent of sympathy his 

 illness creates and the huge blank his death will cause. It 

 is like gouging a piece out of the face of the country. His 

 death-bed is wonderful and makes one wish to have led his 

 life and almost reconciles one to [his] having been a parson ! 

 Well, my dear Anderson, we shall never be like him, a man 

 who never turned back on friend or foe, and never spoke or 

 thought ill of another, a man who with strong enough religious 

 convictions of his own, had the biggest charity for every 

 heresy so long as it was conscientiously entertained. 



And finally on May 23 : 



Henslow has left a blank in my existence never to be 

 replaced. Quite apart from considerations matrimonial, H. 

 had more influence over my life and conduct than any other 

 man, so good, so calm, so wise, so far above all taint of pride, 

 prejudice or passion, so magnanimous in short was he in all 

 situations of life. More than all this, I miss his knowledge 

 of loads of matters bearing on Botany which I never knew 

 or took up but through him, and of loads of kindred subjects 

 in which I have keenly interested myself, ever since I knew 

 him. He was one of those friends formed late in life to be a 

 lamp unto our path whom we never go ahead of as we do 

 with the instructors of our youth. I know what death and 

 losses are, but this is the first of which ' the funeral over ' 

 is no relief. His loss hangs like a dead weight upon me: 

 I feel as if a bit of each faculty was gone for ever, for he 

 sharpened every faculty I had, and created some too. You 

 knew enough of him to understand all this. 



His little daughter, who had died almost suddenly on 

 September 28, was six years old. 



