of his fancy, and that took all the
shapes of glisten or of gloom which his Protean genius gave them. In the
rapid eccentricities of cloud and coruscation, the source which supplied
to the varying forms so much of their substance was hidden or unminded.
But now the fountain of thought and tragedy had been readied, whence the
waters of sin and suffering spring forth clear and unalloyed in their
own deep loneliness, and we hear the gush and the murmur of their stream
in such monodies as "The Song of the Shirt," "The Lay of the Laborer,"
and "The Bridge of Sighs."

Hood died in 1845, and was then only forty-six or forty-seven years old.
Alike esteemed by the poor and the rich, both united to consecrate a
monument to his memory. Kindly should we ever think of those who make
our hearts and our tempers bright; who, without pomp of wisdom, help us
to a cheerfulness which no proud philosophy can give; who, in the motley
of checkered mirth and wit, sparkle on the resting-spots of life. Such
men are rare, and as valuable as they are rare. The world wants them
more than it wants heroes and victors: for mirth is better than
massacre; and it is surely better to hear laughter sounding aloud the
jubilee of the heart, than the shout of battle and yell of conquest.
Precious, then, are those whose genius brings pleasure to the bosom
and sunshine to the face; who not only call our thoughts into festive
action, but brighten our affections into generous feeling. Though we may
not loudly celebrate such men, we greatly miss them; and not on marble
monuments, but in our warmest memories, their names continue fresh. But
laugh and make laugh as they may, they, too, have the destiny of grief;
and unto them, as unto all men, come their passages of tragedy,--the
days of evil, the nights of waking, and the need of pity.

When Hood was near his death a pension of a hundred pounds a year was
settled on his wife, at the instance of Sir Robert Peel. The wife, so
soon to become a widow, did not long survive her husband; then, in 1847,
the pension was continued to their two orphan children, at the instance
of Lord John Russell. Politics and parties were forgotten, in gratitude
to an earnest lover of his kind; and the people, as well as the
government, in helping to provide for those whom he left behind, showed
that they had not forgotten one whose desire it was to improve even more
than to amuse them. And still we cannot but feel sad that there should
ev