.1894 THE END 387 



Your heavy private loss is then coupled in my 

 view with a public calamity ; but while I can rejoice 

 in your retrospect of his labour, I also trust it may 

 please God in His wisdom to raise up others to fill 

 up his place and carry forward his work. May you 

 enjoy the abundance of the Divine consolations in 

 proportion to your great need. 



Believe me, most truly yours, 



W. E. Gladstone. 



Not much remains to be said. The life here 

 described would seem to have been cut short, but, as 

 was said by a friend, ' in a short time he fulfilled a 

 long time,' 1 and few have won for themselves more 

 love in the home and beyond it. He left no enemy, 

 and those who loved him and to whom his loss has left 

 a blank and a desolation of which it is not well to speak, 

 can only be thankful for what he was and for what he 

 is. Not indeed that one would forget those words of 

 Dean Church quoted in the beautiful preface to his 

 Life : 2 



' I often have a kind of waking dream : up one 

 road, the image of a man decked and adorned as if 

 for a triumph, carried up by rejoicing and exulting 

 friends, who praise his goodness and achievements; 

 and, on the other road, turned back to back to it, 

 there is the very man himself, in sordid and squalid 

 apparel, surrounded not by friends but by ministers of 

 justice, and going on, while his friends are exulting, 

 to his certain and perhaps awful judgment. That 

 vision rises when I hear, not just and conscientious 

 endeavours to make out a man's character, but when 



1 Wisdom, iv. 13. 



2 Preface to Life and Letters of Dean Church, p. xxiv. 



