A letter from Mr. Gladstone cannot be omitted, and seems to come in fittingly at this place:
1 Carlton Gardens: June.
Dear Mrs. Romanes,—My present circumstances are not very favourable to direct personal communication, and my personal intercourse with Mr. Romanes was so scanty in its quantity as hardly to warrant my present intrusion, but I cannot help writing a few words for the purpose of conveying my deep sympathy on the heavy bereavement you have sustained, and further of saying how deep an impression he left upon my mind in the point of character not less than of capacity. He was one of the men whom the age specially requires for the investigation and solution of its especial difficulties, and for the conciliation and harmony of interests between which a factitious rivalry has been created.
Your heavy private loss is then coupled in my view with a public calamity; but while I can rejoice in your retrospect of his labour, I also trust it may please God in His wisdom to raise up others to fill up his place and carry forward his work. May you enjoy the abundance of the Divine consolations in proportion to your great need.
Believe me, most truly yours,
W. E. Gladstone.
Not much remains to be said. The life here described would seem to have been cut short, but, as was said by a friend, 'in a short time he fulfilled a long time,'[130] and few have won for themselves more love in the home and beyond it. He left no enemy, and those who loved him and to whom his loss has left a blank and desolation of which it is not well to speak, can only be thankful for what he was and for what he is. Not indeed that one would forget those words of Dean Church quoted in the beautiful preface to his Life:[131]
'I often have a kind of waking dream: up one road, the image of a man decked and adorned as if for a triumph, carried up by rejoicing and exulting friends, who praise his goodness and achievements; and, on the other road, turned back to back to it, there is the very man himself, in sordid and squalid apparel, surrounded not by friends but by ministers of justice, and going on, while his friends are exulting, to his certain and perhaps awful judgment. That vision rises when I hear, not just and conscientious endeavours to make out a man's character, but when I hear the loose things that are said—often in kindness and love—of those beyond the grave.'
But there have been men and women who have lifted the minds and the hearts of those who knew and loved them to increasing love for goodness, to increasing loftiness of ideal, and for these, whom now no praise can hurt, no blame can wound, one can but lift one's heart in ever growing thankfulness for the gifts and graces which made them what they were, and which will grow and increase in them until the Perfect Day.
Beati mundo corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt.