Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/13


 * —Few things are more difficult than to preserve alive for many years the spirit of an anniversary celebration. The memory of even a national deliverance grows faint; the horrors of war, the contest with the oppressor, are alike forgotten; a long peace effaces the recollection of the struggle to attain it, and of the hero by whom it was won.

But still more quickly fades the remembrance of private benefactors. How quickly we all have realised who in one of our cathedrals, or of our college chapels have listened on some Sunday or Festival Day to the Bidding Prayer, and have heard mentioned with thanks to Almighty God the names of men and women gone ages since to their last home, of whom all we know, and almost all that we can learn is, that ‘they