The course of things, the change of ideas and of men, threw him more and more out of any forward and prominent place in the affairs of Greece.  But his presence in Athens was felt everywhere.  There was a man who had given up everything for Greece and sought nothing in return.  His blameless unselfishness, his noble elevation of character, were a warning and a rebuke to the faults which have done so much mischief to the progress of the nation; and yet every Greek in Athens knew that no one among them was more jealous of the honour of the nation or more anxious for its good.  To a new political society, freshly exposed to the temptations of party struggles for power, no greater service can be rendered than a public life absolutely clear from any suspicion of self-seeking, governed uninterruptedly and long by public spirit, public ends, and a strong sense of duty.  Such a service General Church has rendered to his adopted country.  During his residence among them for nearly half a century they have become familiar, not in word, but in living reality, with some of the best things which the West has to impart to the East.  They have had among them an example of English principle, English truth, English high-souled disinterestedness, and that noble English faith which, in a great cause, would rather hope in vain than not hope at all.  They have learned to venerate all this, and, some of them, to love it.

XXI

DEATH OF BISHOP WILBERFORCE[24]

  [24]
  Guardian, 23rd July 1873.

The beautiful summer weather which came on us at the beginning of this week gives by contrast a strange and terrible point to the calamity, the announcement of which sent such a shock through the whole country on Monday last.  Summer days in all their brilliance seemed come at last, after a long waiting which made them the more delightful.  But as people came down to breakfast on that morning, or as they gathered at railway stations on their way to business, the almost incredible tidings met them that the Bishop of Winchester was dead; that he had been killed by a fall from his horse.  In a moment, by the most trivial of accidents, one of the foremost and most stirring men of our generation had passed away from the scene in which his part was so large a one.  With everything calm and peaceful round him, in the midst of the keen but tranquil enjoyment of a summer evening ride with a friend through some of the most charming scenery in England, looking forward to meeting another friend, and to the pleasure which a quiet Sunday brings to hard-worked men in fine weather, and a pleasant country house, the blow fell.  The moment before, as Lord Granville remarks, he had given expression to the fulness of his enjoyment.  He was rejoicing in the fine weather, he was keenly noticing the beauty of the scenery at every point of the way; with his characteristic love of trees he was noticing