Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/411

371 KELLY AND VIRTUE. 371 as grand as the King's, drawn by six bay horses, richly caparisoned. . . He does not seem to be more than sixty-two years of age, and his figure, slight as it is, is still imposing for the flowing wig and ermine mantle, which encircled all his person, added not a little to the dignity of his presence. ... A thriving bookseller, yet a perfectly honest man, and very charitable." The last sentence is an admirable summary of his character. The attainment of this honour terminated his com- mercial and public life, for after this date he relin- quished, in a great degree, his business cares ; but to an extreme old age he retained his faculties, and he retained also his habits of quiet and discriminating charity, doing good by stealth, and blushing to find it known. On the 2Oth October, 1854, he paid his last visit to his parent's grave, and was there heard to mur- mur, " How very happy I am." His failing health com- pelled him to visit Margate, and here, on the 7th of September, 1855, he died in a ripe old age. A letter, written just before his death, evidently betrays a lingering fondness for early childish days : "We are surrounded by fields of fully-ripening corn some cut, some cutting," babbling, like FalstafT, of green fields, till the sixty years of town life were forgotten. Thomas Kelly was one of those men of whom the London citizens are so proud men who come to the mighty centre of commerce utterly friendless, and worse still, penniless, and whom industry, labour, and good fortune exalt to the very pinnacle of a good citizen's fondest dreams. But he was more than a Lord Mayor he was a true friend ; he was a loving, dutiful, and tender son qualities not always insured even by commercial success.