Types of the total earth, they hailed
The signal’s starry frame:
Shuddering with second life, they quailed
At the Child Jesu’s name.
Then slow the patriarchs turned and trod,
And this their parting sigh,—
“Our eyes have seen the living God,
And now—once more to die.”
We began this chapter with stories illustrating the harsh side of Mr. Hawker’s character. We have slided insensibly into those which show him forth in his gentler nature. There was in him the eagle and the dove: it is pleasanter to think of the dove-like characteristics of this grand old man.
And naturally, when we speak of him in his softer moods, not when he is doing battle for God and the Church, and—it must be admitted—for his own whims, but when he is at peace and full of smiles, we come to think of him in his relations with children.