"Droop half-mast colors, bow, bareheaded crowds, As this plain coffin o'er the side is slung, To pass by woods of masts and ratlined shrouds, As erst by Afric's trunks, liana-hung.
'Tis the last mile of many thousands trod With failing strength but never-failing will, By the worn frame, now at its rest with God, That never rested from its fight with ill.
Or if the ache of travel and of toil Would sometimes wring a short, sharp cry of pain From agony of fever, blain, and boil, 'Twas but to crush it down and on again!
He knew not that the trumpet he had blown Out of the darkness of that dismal land, Had reached and roused an army of its own To strike the chains from the slave's fettered hand.
Now we believe, he knows, sees all is well; How God had stayed his will and shaped his way, To bring the light to those that darkling dwell With gains that life's devotion well repay.
Open the Abbey doors and bear him in To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage, The missionary come of weaver-kin, But great by work that brooks no lower wage.
He needs no epitaph to guard a name Which men shall prize while worthy work is known; He lived and died for good--be that his fame: Let marble crumble: this is Living--stone."--_Punch_.
Eulogiums on the dead are often attempts, sometimes sufficiently clumsy, to conceal one-half of the truth and fill the eye with the other. In the case of Livingstone there is really nothing to conceal. In tracing his life in these pages we have found no need for the brilliant colors of the rhetorician, the ingenuity of the partisan, or the enthusiasm of the hero-worshiper. We have felt, from first to last, that a plain, honest statement of the truth regarding him would be a higher panegyric than any ideal picture that could be drawn. The best tributes paid to his memory by distinguished countrymen were the most literal--we might almost say the most prosaic. It is but a few leaves we can reproduce of the many wreaths that were laid on his tomb.
Sir Bartle Frere, as President of the Royal Geographical Society, after a copious notice of his life, summed it up in these words: "As a whole, the work of his life will surely be held up in ages to come as one of singular nobleness of design, and of unflinching energy and self-sacrifice in execution. It will be long ere any one man will be able to open so large an extent of unknown land to civilized mankind. Yet longer, perhaps, ere we find a brighter example of a life of such continued and useful self-devotion to a noble cause."
In a recent letter to Dr. Livingstone's eldest daughter, Sir Bartle Frere (after saying that he was first introduced to Dr. Livingstone by Mr. Phillip, the painter, as "one of the noblest men he had ever met," and rehearsing the history of his early acquaintance) remarks:
"I could hardly venture to describe my estimate of his character as a Christian further than by saying that I never met a man who fulfilled more completely my idea of a perfect Christian gentleman,--actuated in what he thought and said and did by the highest and most chivalrous spirit, modeled on the precepts of his great Master and Exemplar.
"As a man of science, I am less competent to judge, for my knowledge of his work is to a great extent second-hand; but derived, as it is, from observers like Sir Thomas Maclear, and geographers like Arrowsmith, I believe him to be quite unequaled as a scientific traveler, in the care and accuracy with which he observed. In other branches of science I had more opportunities of satisfying myself, and of knowing how keen and accurate was his observation, and how extensive his knowledge of everything connected with natural science; but every page of his journals, to the last week of his life, testified to his wonderful natural powers and accurate observation. Thirdly, as a missionary and explorer I have always put him in the very first rank. He seemed to me to possess in the most wonderful degree that union of opposite qualities which were required for such a work as opening out heathen Africa to Christianity and civilization. No man had a keener sympathy with even the most barbarous and unenlightened; none had a more ardent desire to benefit and improve the most abject. In his aims, no man attempted, on a grander or more thorough scale, to benefit and improve those of his race who most needed improvement and light. In the execution of what he undertook, I never met his equal for energy and sagacity, and I feel sure that future ages will place him among the very first of those missionaries, who, following the apostles, have continued to carry the light of the gospel to the darkest regions of the world, throughout the last 1800 years. As regards the value of the work he accomplished, it might be premature to speak,--not that I think it possible I can over-estimate it, but because I feel sure that every year will add fresh evidence to show how well-considered were the plans he took in hand, and how vast have been the results of the movements he set in motion."