Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/7



met together here in our Hall last year to do honour, on this our high Feast-day, to one whose lot it was to stand up before all time in the vigour and vividness of an historic personality; one endowed with an energy to mould the policy of a State, a boldness to encounter Emperors, an ambition that sought its home in the spiritual throne of Catholic Christendom: one who gathered up into himself, for the last time in England's history, the gorgeous pomp and power and splendour, which was possible only when one man could wield at once the sword of the State and the thunders of the Church, could robe the bare human mechanism of his authority from the king with the ghostly grandeur of an embassy from the Emerald-bound Throne set on the Crystal Sea. To-night I have to bring before the memory of the House a character of a far different type; the character of a quiet, humble, home-like scholar, of a gentle, modest musician; of a man, born indeed into stormy times, but round whose peaceful life and temper storms and tempests broke in vain; of one who seems ever to shrink from such publicity as his