Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/437

 of humble professions, and by his talent and his character he exalted it to a dignity that thrones or crowns may seldom attain. While his gifts of intellect were unquestionably rich, yet it was his largeness of heart, resoluteness of will, singleness of purpose and firmness of faith that signalised his noble career. Little fitted to judge of greatness, I have somehow always associated his name with that of the great Duke of Wellington. Like that illustrious hero, our revered master, too, "stood four-square to all the winds that blew"; he, too, "sought but Duty's iron crown;" he, too, proved that "the path of duty was the way to glory."

Representative to an uncommon degree will be the meeting over which you will preside tomorrow — representative of the keenest regrets and the profoundest reverence of thousands of fellow-mourners and admirers spread all over the Presidency and beyond it. How true of him the "household word" he himself quoted feelingly on an important occasion — -