For more than thirty years Livingstone lived in Africa, always travelling about, and finding new tribes of natives, all of whom he got to know, and all of whom became fond of him; and at last, when he died in a little hut which his black servants had built for him in the middle of one of these great African forests, Susi and Chumah, two of his followers, who had been with him for many years, came all the way to England with the body of their dead master. On the day when he was buried, the Abbey was crowded with people who came from all parts of England and Scotland; and among all the white faces were seen two black ones, for the faithful servants stood close by the grave; and Dean Stanley, who read the service, said afterwards that he had never seen two men seem more broken-hearted. On his tombstone you will read of one more thing which he did for the natives whilst he lived among them; and that was, to help to abolish the slave-trade in Central Africa. He was sixty years old when he died, and he had worked all his life to raise the lives of thousands of African savages into something better and happier.

Many other great men I have no time to tell you about, but there are two more, of whom I particularly want you to hear a few words—Henry Fawcett and Sir John Franklin. Henry Fawcett[16] was not a soldier, nor a great traveller, but he was known for many years all over England as the “Blind Postmaster-General.” He was not born blind, and why I want to tell you about him is to show you what a brave man can do when such a terrible misfortune as becoming blind happens to him. He was born in 1833, and died in 1884, and for twenty-six years of his life he was quite blind. He lost his sight in this way. He was out shooting one day with his father, who fired at a bird without noticing that his son was close by. Suddenly he saw that some of the shots, instead of hitting the bird, had hit his son in the eyes. Henry Fawcett was wearing spectacles, and a shot went through each of the glasses, making a little round hole in them, and then going on into his eyes. From that moment he never saw again. His first thought, he afterwards told his sister, was that he should never again see the lovely view, and the colours of the autumn leaves on the trees, as he had seen them a moment before; his second thought was to try and do everything he could to comfort his father, who must need comfort almost as much as he did himself. So, at twenty-five years of age, Henry Fawcett, who had made up his mind to work hard as a barrister—for he was very poor—and make enough money to go into Parliament, which had been his great wish ever since he was at school, suddenly found all his plans and all his hopes upset. But his courage never gave way; he determined that his blindness should not make him a helpless, disappointed man. “In ten minutes after the accident,” he said some years later, “he had made up his mind that he would stick to what he had meant to do.” And so he did. He had been a great rider, a great skater, and a great fisherman, and all these things he kept up. He skated with his friends, holding on to a stick by which they guided him; he rode, he fished, he walked, behaving in all things as though he were not blind. He was obliged to give up being a barrister, but he became a professor at Cambridge. He wrote in papers and magazines (of course some one had to do the actual writing for him, but he dictated it), and at last, when he was thirty-two years old, that is to say, seven years after the accident, he achieved his object, and became member of Parliament (the Blind Member, he was sometimes called) for Brighton.

It would take too long to tell you of all the work he did for his country after he was in Parliament, but he was always trying to improve things; he was never idle, and at last, when he was made Postmaster-General, he hardly ever had time for a holiday. He was a favourite with every one, and, when he was ill, telegrams and letters used to come from all parts of England to ask after him. He always took a great interest in other blind people, and was fond of saying to them, “Do what you can to act as though you were not blind; be of good courage, and help yourselves.” And to his friends, and all who had blind friends or relations, he was never tired of saying, “Do not treat us as though you pitied us for our misfortune; the kindest thing that can be done or said to a blind person is to help him as far as possible to be of good cheer, to give him confidence that help will be afforded him whenever necessary, that there is still good work for him to do, and, the more active his career, the more useful his life to others, the more happy his days to himself.” These are his own words. They are brave words; but Henry Fawcett was, as you have seen, a brave man, and fought and conquered all the great difficulties with which his blindness surrounded him, with as much courage as Sir James Outram showed when he fought his way into Lucknow, or David Livingstone when he journeyed through the deserts and forests of Africa. And that is why a memorial of him was put up in Westminster Abbey by the people of England, who subscribed for it, so that the heroic life of the Blind Postmaster-General should never be forgotten.

Sir John Franklin[17] was a sailor and a great Arctic explorer, who made many expeditions, and went nearer to the North Pole than any man had ever been before. He and his companions endured every kind of hardship in the ice and the snow of the Arctic regions. He died on his third expedition, just two years after last leaving England, and was buried in the far-away cold North amidst the snow under slabs of ice. On the monument in Westminster Abbey, which was put up in his memory by his wife, Lady Franklin, are written the words “O ye frost and cold, O ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord: praise Him, and magnify Him for ever.” The story of the expedition is a very sad one, for, during the winter after Sir John’s death, it became clear to the sailors that the ships were so fast in the ice, which had closed in and frozen all round them, that they would never be able to move again. So at last, nearly all the provisions being exhausted, the men abandoned their ships, and with boats and sledges, which they carried or dragged over the ice, set out to walk southwards in the hope that they might at last reach the unfrozen sea and meet a ship. But this they never did, for they were starved and ill, and although another expedition had been sent from England to look for them, it was too late to save them. The only traces ever found of them were their skeletons, and the boats and sledges, containing many books and papers which Sir John had written, saying how far he had been, and what he had done on this voyage from which he never returned.

His epitaph, written by Lord Tennyson, is one of the most beautiful in the Abbey—

“Not here! the white North has thy bones; and thou,
Heroic sailor-soul,
Art passing on thine happier voyage now
Toward no earthly pole.”

CHAPTER IV.

In Westminster Abbey are the graves of many poets—so many that one part of the church (the south transept) is always known as Poets’ Corner.

Geoffrey Chaucer,[18] who wrote among other things a book called the “Canterbury Tales,” and who died as long ago as 1400, was one of the first English poets buried in Poets’ Corner; and the last was Alfred Tennyson,[19] who died in 1892, and was buried close beside Chaucer, just four hundred and ninety-two years afterwards.

When I was telling you the story of the Indian Mutiny, I spoke of a poem called “Lucknow,” which described in a wonderful way the sufferings of the people who were shut up in the Residency during the long siege. This poem and very many others were written by Alfred Tennyson, the great poet, who was made by the Queen Poet Laureate of England, and then, many years afterwards, Lord Tennyson, by which name you will always hear him spoken of.