The end came very gently and peacefully. After the long and stormy voyage, the vessel came into harbour through unwonted calms and waters almost without a ripple. He was laid in his grave in Jordan's meeting-house beside his dearly loved Guli, and not far from his mother and Isaac Pennington. Many gathered there to pay the last honours. And since that day, the spot hallowed by his dust has been a well-visited shrine, where many have not only thought admiringly of his deeds, but have also thanked God for the grace that was in him.
If Macaulay was prejudiced against Penn, his testimony to his world-wide fame is the more reliable. We will quote it as it stands. "Rival nations and hostile sects have agreed in canonising him. England is proud of his name. A great commonwealth beyond the Atlantic regards him with a reverence similar to that which the Athenians felt for Theseus, and the Romans for Quirinus. The respected society of which he was a member honours him as an apostle. By pious men of other denominations he is usually regarded as a bright pattern of Christian virtue. Meanwhile admirers of a very different sort have sounded his praises. The French philosophers of the eighteenth century pardoned what they regarded as his superstitious fancies in consideration of his contempt for priests, and of his cosmopolitan benevolence, impartially extended to all races and to all creeds. His name has thus become, throughout all civilised countries, a synonym for probity and philanthropy."
"Nor is this reputation altogether unmerited. Penn was without doubt a man of eminent virtues. He had a strong sense of religious duty, and a fervent desire to promote the happiness of mankind. On one or two points of high importance he had notions more correct than were in his day common, even among men of enlarged minds; and as the proprietor and legislator of a province, which, being almost uninhabited when it came into his possession, afforded a clear field for moral experiments, he had the rare good fortune of being able to carry his theories into practice without any compromise, and yet without any shock to existing institutions. He will always be mentioned with honour as the founder of a Colony, who did not in his dealings with a savage people abuse the strength derived from civilisation, and as a law-giver who in an age of persecution, made religious liberty the corner-stone of a polity."
This testimony is bare justice, indeed it needs supplementing. Macaulay has done justice to his fame, but not to his usefulness or to his beautiful character. For to use the beautiful figure which the Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster employs, "like as the citizens of Philadelphia are even now building the streets which he planned on the unpeopled waste, so are the workmen in the temple of freedom yet labouring at the design which he sketched out." And in the work they have not only his designs to assist them, but the inspiration of his noble life to stimulate them.
The story of Penn's life, so noble and yet so sad in many parts, has touched many hearts. "He reminds me of Abraham or Æneas more than any one else," says Professor Seeley. "I find him," says Tennyson, (writing Mar. 3rd, 1882, to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania), "no comet of a season, but the fixed light of a dark and graceless age, shining into the present—a good man and true." In Caroline Fox's "Memories of Old Friends" we read,—"He (Ernest de Bunsen) has been translating William Penn's life into German and sent a copy to Humboldt, from whom he received two charming letters about it, in one saying that he has read every word, and that the contemplation of such a life has contributed to the peace of his old age."
Such testimonies could be multiplied indefinitely. The character and life that inspire such feelings need no defence and no eulogy.