Long did they search the battlefield for Harold’s body, disfigured by wounds and loss of blood, but long did they seek it in vain, till a woman whose toil had never ceased burst into a sharp cry over a lifeless form.  It was Edith, who with many another woman had watched the battle.  The body was too changed to be recognized even by its nearest friends; but beneath his heart was punctured in old Saxon letters “Edith,” and just below, in characters more fresh, “England,” the new love he had taken when duty bade him turn from Edith; which recalls the lines of Lovelace to Lucasta: 

    “Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
      That from the nunnery
    Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
      To war and arms I fly.

    True, a new mistress now I chase,
      The first foe of the field;
    And with a stronger faith embrace
      A sword, a horse, a shield.

    Yet this inconstancy is such
      As you too shall adore;
    I could not love thee, dear, so much
      Loved I not not honor more.”

* * * * *

XXXVIII.

PETER COOPER,

(BORN 1791—­DIED 1883.)

THE LESSON OF A LONG AND USEFUL LIFE.

Barzillai, of sacred history, was a very old man, a very kind man, a very affectionate man, a very rich man of the tenth century before Christ, a type of our American philanthropist, Peter Cooper, in the nineteenth century after Christ.  When I see Barzillai, from his wealthy country seat at Rogelim, coming out to meet David’s retreating army, and providing them with flour and corn and mattresses, it makes me think of the hearty response of our modern philanthropist in time of trouble and disaster, whether individual, municipal, or national.  The snow of his white locks has melted from our sight, and the benediction of his genial face has come to its long amen.  But his influence halted not a half-second for his obsequies to finish, but goes right on without change, save that of augmentation, for in the great sum of a useful life death is a multiplication instead of subtraction, and the tombstone, instead of being the goal of the race, is only the starting point.  What means this rising up of all good men, with hats off, in reverence to one who never wielded a sword or delivered masterly oration or stood in senatorial place?  Neither general, nor lord, nor governor, nor President.  The LL.  D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to him.  The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix, seemed a superfluity.  He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper.  Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from multitudes who have no adequate way to express their bereavement?