A simple mannered, rude and rugged man,
But true and wise and merciful and just.
Of all these monuments, when all we scan,
Which rises o'er more justly honoured dust?
Rowland Hill, always one of Punch's special heroes, was buried in the Abbey in September of the same year. Here Punch's best tribute is in prose, when he speaks of him as
Rowland Hill, Stanley, and Darwin.
One of the greatest benefactors to his country and to the civilized world that it ever produced; now inhabiting an abode among the band of departed worthies who in this life were heroes and saints and bards of the better sort:—
Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.
The verses on Dean Stanley in July, 1881, are not quoted in his Life by Lord Ernle, so I make no excuse for printing them here:—
With clear, calm eye he fronted Faith, and she,
Despite the clamorous crowd,