18 MARCH 1854, Page 13

DEATH'S LATEST GUESTS.

PERHAPS Death has not recently been busier than usual, but he has made his hand unusually visible, by cutting off those who stood conspicuous among us in many ways. Men who are types of all classes and dispositions has he been snatching away,—the soldier, the author, the peer, the clergyman, the judge, the artist ; and we are reminded of our mortality by the many ways in which humanity has been touched—in its power, its intellect, its affec- tions.

Although it is not for us to judge, yet how impossible it is to abstain from expressing some estimate of a man at the close of his life we all know. The conscious finiteness of sense and recollec- tion induces us to sum him up—to reduce his memory to its ashes, and to allot him a niche in the unseen mausoleum. And how dif- ferently are men judged as the judges differ among themselves— nay, as one individual differs from himself. Always reflection teaches us that the first superficial judgment is seldom right. Ask what good a man has done, and you seem to have the infallible test ; but what is "to do good " ? There are many modes ; didactic preaching and mechanical charity not being the sole or the highest modes. Good may be conferred, too, individually or distributive- ly; and it may take shapes often forgotten in our mechanical me- thods of classifying virtues. Leigh Hunt tells a story after the Orientalist D'Herbelot, and has perhaps thrown too Christian a spirit into the Eastern legend for local colour ; but the moral is true in Christian or Saracen faith. Abon ben Adhem is awakened at night by the presence of an angel of light, who is writing on a tablet the names of those that have been distinguished above all others by their love of God. Abou is told that his name is not there. "Write me, then," he prays, "amongst those who loved their fellow-creatures, the beloved of God"; and next night the angel shows Abou ben Adhem his own name placed first of all the list. Yet how is it that men show their love of their kind ? As- suredly not in one way alone ; and those who have recently left us have chosen very various ways. The obscurer man who left a legacy to the Consumption Hospi- tal at Brompton may be easily pronounced to have effected a more likely benefit than the Scotch physician Wylie, who, dying, leaves his fortune to his old patient and master the Emperor Nicholas. Perhaps it was a dogged sense of honesty, not to bring away that which had grown on Russian soil ; perhaps it was making a virtue of necessity, and giving what it might have been difficult to carry off. But, at any rate, there is no hesitation in pronouncing that he has not better served his race who bequeathed the earnings of industry to the Autocrat, warring on the testator's country, than the humble benefactor of the Hospital. Nor even than the singer Rubini—the "mere caterer for amusement "—whose lovely song fostered the gentler sentiments in myriads of breasts, and whose perfect execution developed the resources of a great art. Many are the teachers who die in the execution of honest duty ; but how much has he done who, like a Richards, has enjoyed the high lot of being appointed to instil justice, duty, and mercy, into the mind of England's future Sovereign—teaching the heart that is to rule over millions ! Many a legislator can point to better enactments [than any which own Vane Londonderry for their au- thor, many a general has been a more distinguished officer, many a statesman has started more novel propositions ; but, with a warm heart, he showed that the common feelings of our nature survive changes of custom, diversities of class, and succession of creed; in acts of kindliness as a landlord he assuaged asperities of lowly hardship; and in vindicating the claims of the captive Arab he restored the immortal standard of chivalry, for the benefit of fu- ture ages as well as our own.

Twice blessed, however, is the judgment on him for whom im- pulse and reflection both deliver the same sentence ; and Talfourd. is one of those whose life and death invite that double sentence. A cultivated man, he carried with him to the highest post which he attained the gentlest ambitions of the artist and the scholar. With a keen sympathy he shared the refined pleasures which he con- tributed to diffuse. A pedantic half-reflection might recall the foibles incident to the very simplicity and unguarded kindliness of a genial nature ; but if he shared the imperfections without which humanity cannot be, he could soar above those weaknesses, above even the,gentler amenities most familiar to him, and, fulfilling one of the best and sternest duties of the judge, declare, not only the penalty for his erring fellows, not only the letter of the law for their restraint, but the excuses also for their error, and the duty of society to aid in their redemption ; and it was thus speaking that the Angel of Death found him. With a cultivated intellect and a good heart, it was through much cheerful labour, not fruit- less, that Thomas Noon Talfourd earned his title to be written among those that loved their fellow-creatures.