CHAPTER XXX 

 FOTHERGILL'S CLOSING YEARS 



Aimer et se faire aimer a travers tant de douleurs n'est-ce pas le 

 dernier mot de 1'art de vivre ? EDOUARD ROD. 



It may not be our lot to wield 

 The sickle in the ripened field ; 

 Nor ours to hear on summer eves 

 The reaper's song among the sheaves. 



Yet where our Duty's task is wrought 

 In unison with God's great thought, 

 The near and future blend in one, 

 And whatsoe'er is willed, is done. 



WHITTIER. 



Let us learn to live in hope. Those who are now at rest were once 

 like ourselves. They have overcome, each one, and one by one ; each 

 in his turn, when the day came, and God called him to the trial. And 

 so shall you likewise. CARDINAL MANNING. 



A FEW pages will now be devoted to the closing years of 

 Fothergill's life. Most of his labours were continued to 

 the end of his course. He could not get free from them 

 if he would. For he was in the full tide of professional 

 work, every year adding to his reputation, and his opinion 

 and advice often called for in official matters. The 

 philanthropic causes in which he had worked so long 

 grew in their demands upon him, and the pursuit of 

 knowledge in many fields had become a habit, not to be 

 laid down. But the bodily powers grew less as years 

 advanced. As with his brother Samuel, the physical 

 setting of the active mind was too slender to reach into 

 prolonged age. It was not the lot of a Fothergill to 

 attain the otium cum dignitate those closing years of 

 peace and recollection which fitly crown the lives of some 

 men, and to which he had sometimes looked forward 



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