Page:God Manifest.djvu/78

68 disease which he had taken while engaged in his course of benevolence, far from his home and country, on the shores of the Black Sea,—he said to Admiral Priestman, who visited him, and who endeavoured to turn his mind from the prospect of death,—"Priestman, you style this a dull conversation, and endeavour to divert my mind from dwelling upon death: but I entertain very different sentiments. Death has no terrors for me: it is an event I always look to with cheerfulness, if not with pleasure; and, be assured, the subject is more grateful to me than any other." He then spoke of his funeral, and of the place where he wished to be interred. "There is a spot," said he, "near the village of Dauphigny; this would suit me nicely; you know it well, for I have often said that I should like to be buried there. And let me beg of you, as you value your old friend, not to suffer any pomp to be used at my funeral, nor any monument nor monumental inscription whatever to mark where I am laid; but lay me quietly in the earth, place a sundial over my grave, and let me be forgotten."

He could not be forgotten. Could the freed captive forget him who had loosed his chains? Could the sighing prisoner forget one who had come to soothe his sorrows, when all else had forsaken him,—one, who had remembered him, when all others had forgotten? Could any good men forget the man who had set to the world one of the noblest examples of heavenly disinterestedness and Christian benevolence that the history of humanity can show? No! Howard could not be forgotten, nor will be, while goodness has a friend on earth, nor while there are angels in heaven:—there, we trust, he has long been, receiving