The Greek poet says men knew when the goddess came to Thebes because of the blessings she left in her track.  Her footprints were not in the sea, soon obliterated, nor in the snow, quickly melting, but in fields and forests.  This unseen friend, passing by the tree blackened by a thunderbolt, stayed her step; lo! the woodbine sprang up and covered the tree’s nakedness.  She lingered by the stagnant pool—­the pool became a flowing spring.  She rested upon a fallen log—­from decay and death came moss, the snowdrop and the anemone.  At the crossing of the brook were her footprints; not in mud downward, but in violets that sprang up in her pathway.  O beautiful prophecy! literally fulfilled 2,000 years afterward in the life of the London apple woman, whose atmosphere sweetened bitter hearts and made evil into good.

Wealth and eminent position witness not less powerfully the transforming influence of exalted characters.  “My lords,” said Salisbury, “the reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the presence here of one man—­Lord Shaftesbury.  The genius of his life was expressed when last he addressed you.  He said:  ’When I feel age creeping upon me I am deeply grieved, for I cannot bear to go away and leave the world with so much misery in it.’” So long as Shaftesbury lived, England beheld a standing rebuke of all wrong and injustice.  How many iniquities shriveled up in his presence!  This man, representing the noblest ancestry, wealth and culture, wrought numberless reforms.  He became a voice for the poor and weak.  He gave his life to reform acts and corn laws; he emancipated the enslaved boys and girls toiling in mines and factories; he exposed and made impossible the horrors of that inferno in which chimney-sweeps live; he founded twoscore industrial, ragged and trade schools; he established shelters for the homeless poor; when Parliament closed its sessions at midnight Lord Shaftesbury went forth to search out poor prodigals sleeping under Waterloo or Blackfriars bridge, and often in a single night brought a score to his shelter.  When the funeral cortege passed through Pall Mall and Trafalgar square on its way to Westminster Abbey, the streets for a mile and a half were packed with innumerable thousands.  The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were inscribed these words:  “I was sick and in prison and ye visited me.”  The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; “I was hungry and naked and ye fed me.”  All England felt the force of that colossal character.  To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury—­the fitting motto therefor; “The reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the presence and influence of Shaftesbury.”  If our generation is indeed held back from injustice and anarchy and bloodshed, it will be because Shaftesbury the peer, and Samuel, the seer, are duplicated in the lives of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and weak.