hird Psalm, but stopped and
said, "There is nothing like the original," which was then read from the
Bible. His mother's favourite hymn, "Hail, sovereign Light," was also by
his special desire read to him.

Another sleep--a wandering, perhaps unconscious, look at his children, a
struggle, and then a quietness? and the pilgrimage was over, the spirit
had fled to be present with the Lord whom he had loved so well and
served so faithfully. "His end was peace."

He died on the 10th of August, 1883, in his eighty-eighth year.

The funeral took place a few days later at Norwood Cemetery, when,
surrounded by such relatives as were in England, Sir Bartle Frere, Mr.
Samuel Morley and several other Members of Parliament, deputations from
the various Missionary and several Religious Societies, and by the Mayor
of Bloemfontein, his remains were consigned to the tomb.

Never had a truer hero been borne to the grave, nor one more thoroughly
worthy of the name of MAN.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION.

As soon as it was realised that Robert Moffat had actually gone, it was
felt that a truly great man had departed from among us. A niche in the
temple of earth's true nobility seemed empty. The prevailing feeling was
given expression to by some of the leading journals, which in eulogistic
articles commented upon the life, work, and character of him who had
gone.

_The Times_, in its review, contained the following remarks:--"His chief
work was among the Bechwanas. His picture of what they were when he
first knew them would hardly now be recognised, so entirely have they
changed under the new influences which Moffat was the first to bring to
bear upon them. He found them mere savages, constantly at war among
themselves and with their neighbours, ignorant of the arts of
agriculture, and in the utterly degraded state for which we must seek a
counterpart now in the more distant tribes, whom the message of
civilisation has not yet reached. His first care was to make himself
thoroughly master of the language of those to whom he was sent. For
fifty years he has declared he had been accustomed to speak the
Bechwana tongue; he reduced it to written characters, and translated the
Scriptures into it. The Bechwanas, under Moffat's guidance, became new
men. Mission work grew and spread among them; what Moffat had begun to
do was taken up by other hands; a permanent body of native pastors was
created from among the Bechwana