23 NOVEMBER 1934, Page 6

I am indebted to several correspondents for suggesting alternatives to

Sir John Simon's " most moving single sentence in modern English literature." Unfortunately there is not room to quote them all. Two correspondents suggest the closing words of Motley's " Dutch Republic " (regarding William of Orange) : " As long as he lived he was the guiding star of a brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets."

Among others are Thackeray's description of the death of Colonel Newcome (" The Colonel said adsum ' ") ; the last entry in Pepys' Diary ; the description of the deaths of Tom and Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, and the last sentence of Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. These hardly seem to me to exhaust the