uest; while to Bishop Stanley was left
the melancholy opportunity of bearing a testimony to his public and
private character, in the memorable form of a funeral sermon from the
cathedral pulpit, a tribute of respect unexampled since the days of
George Fox. His life spent in doing good, in preaching as the minister
of the society to which he belonged, in England, Ireland, upon the
Continent, and in America, was full of interest. In the legislative
hall, at Washington, before the assembled members of Congress, his voice
was heard. Louis Philippe, Guizot, and De Stael, were among his auditors
in France; the King of Holland abandoned, through his counsel, the
importation of slave soldiers from the Gold Coast; Vinet at Lausanne,
D'Aubigne in Geneva, and the King of Wirtemberg, held council with him.
To attempt to chronicle his deeds of pecuniary munificence, public and
private, would be an herculean task. The great sums lavished upon public
societies, the world of necessity was made acquainted with, but they
formed but a moiety of the aids furnished from his abundance to the wants
of the needy. He was truly one whose left hand was not suffered to know
the deeds of its fellow. The sick and the poor, at home and abroad, the
industrious and the struggling, the aged and the young--each and all
shared his bounty and loving help, for he was one who _gave_, and did not
_fling_ his charities down from the proud heights of opulence, so that
poverty might blush to pick them up. But the record of his life was
inscribed upon the page of history in characters indelible by the tears
that watered his pathway to the tomb. We have made a faint effort to
paint the last solemn scene that marked the close of the lamented Bishop
Stanley's career, and were almost tempted to place side by side with it
the shade of grief that hung over the city when the great "_Friend_" was
suddenly called home from his labours of usefulness and love upon earth.
Few will ever be able to forget the scene of mourning and sorrow that
followed the unlooked-for event, or the almost unparalleled silence of
woe that was written upon every heart and countenance among the thronging
thousands that attended to pay the last tributes of respect at the grave
of the beloved and honoured philanthropist; when Magistrates and
Artizans, Clergymen and Dissenting Ministers, Churchmen, Independents,
Baptists, Methodists, and Friends, representatives of every grade of
society and s