beautiful voice, from which, in public or in secret, each had received noble impulses, tender consolation, loving correction, and clearer and juster conceptions of God, of duty, of the meaning of themselves and of the universe.  And when they turned and left his body there, the world—­as one said who served him gallantly and long--seemed darker now he had left it; but he had stayed here long enough to do the work for which he was fitted.  He had wasted no time, but died, like a valiant man, at his work, and of his work.

He might have been buried in Westminster Abbey.  There was no lack of men of mark who held that such a public recognition of his worth was due, not only to the man himself, but to the honour of the Church of England.  His life had been one of rare sanctity; he was a philosopher of learning and acuteness, unsurpassed by any man of his generation; he had done more than any man of that generation to defend the Church’s doctrines; to recommend her to highly-cultivated men and women; to bring within her pale those who had been born outside it, or had wandered from it; to reconcile the revolutionary party among the workmen of the great cities with Christianity, order, law; to make all ranks understand that if Christianity meant anything, it meant that a man should not merely strive to save his own soul after death, but that he should live here the life of a true citizen, virtuous, earnest, helpful to his human brethren.  He had been the originator of, or at least the chief mover in, working-men’s colleges, schemes for the higher education of women, for the protection of the weak and the oppressed.  He had been the champion, the organiser, the helper with his own money and time, of that co-operative movement—­the very germ of the economy of the future—­which seems now destined to spread, and with right good results, to far other classes, and in far other forms, than those of which Mr. Maurice was thinking five-and-twenty years ago.  His whole life had been one of unceasing labour for that which he believed to be truth and right, and for the practical amelioration of his fellow-creatures.  He had not an enemy, unless it were here and there a bigot or a dishonest man—­two classes who could not abide him, because they knew well that he could not abide them.  But for the rest, those from whom he had differed most, with whom he had engaged, ere now, in the sharpest controversy, had learned to admire his sanctity, charity, courtesy—­for he was the most perfect of gentlemen—­as well as to respect his genius and learning.  He had been welcomed to Cambridge, by all the finer spirits of the University, as Professor of Moral Philosophy; and as such, and as the parish priest of St. Edward’s, he had done his work—­as far as failing health allowed—­as none but he could do it.  Nothing save his own too-scrupulous sense of honour had prevented him from accepting some higher ecclesiastical preferment—­which he would have used, alas!