Part 11

So soon as the death of Livingstone was known to his men, they resolved to carry their master's remains to Zanzibar. Arrangements were made for drying and embalming the body, after removing the heart and other viscera. For fourteen days the body was dried in the sun. After being wrapped in calico, and the legs bent inward at the knees, it was enclosed in a large piece of bark from a Myonga tree in the form of a cylinder; over this a piece of sail-cloth was sewed; and the package was lashed to a pole, so as to be carried by two men. Jacob Wainwright carved an inscription on the Moula tree under which the body had rested, and where the heart was buried, and Chitambo was charged to keep the grass cleared away, and to protect two posts and a cross-piece which they erected to mark the spot.

The remains were brought to Aden on board the "Calcutta," and thereafter transferred to the steamer "Malwa," which arrived at Southampton on the 15th of April. Mr. Thomas Livingstone, eldest surviving son of the Doctor, being then in Egypt on account of his health, had gone on board at Alexandria. The body was conveyed to London by special train and deposited in the rooms of the Geographical Society in Saville Row.

In the course of the evening the remains were examined by Sir William Fergusson and several other medical gentlemen, including Dr. Loudon, of Hamilton, whose professional skill and great kindness to his family had gained for him a high place in the esteem and love of Livingstone. To many persons it had appeared so incredible that the remains should have been brought from the heart of Africa to London, that some conclusive identification of the body seemed to be necessary to set all doubt at rest. The state of the arm, the one that had been broken by the lion, supplied the crucial evidence. "Exactly in the region of the attachment of the deltoid to the humerus" (wrote Sir William Fergusson in a contribution to the _Lancet_, April 18, 1874), "there were the indications of an oblique fracture. On moving the arm there were the indications of an ununited fracture. A closer identification and dissection displayed the false joint that had so long ago been so well recognized by those who had examined the arm in former days.... The first glance set my mind at rest, and that, with further examination, made me as positive as to the identification of these remains as that there has been among us in modern times one of the greatest men of the human race--David Livingstone."

The black slab that now marks the resting-place of Livingstone in Westminster Abbey bears this inscription:

BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS OVER LAND AND SEA, HERE RESTS DAVID LIVINGSTONE, MISSIONARY, TRAVELER, PHILANTHROPIST, BORN MARCH 19, 1813, AT BLANTYRE, LANARKSHIRE. DIED MAY 4,[28] 1873, AT CHITAMBO'S VILLAGE, ILALA.

For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and abolish the desolating slave-trade of Central Africa, and where, with his last words he wrote: "All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one--American, English, Turk--who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

Along the right border of the stone are the words:

TANTUS AMOR VERI, NIHIL EST QUOD NOSCERE MALIM QUAM FLUVII CAUSAS PER SÆCULA TANTA LATENTES.

And along the left border:

OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD, THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY SHALL HEAR MY VOICE. _Blaikie's "Personal Life of Livingstone."_

The late E. J. Glane, who crossed Africa in the interest of _The Century_, makes the following entry in his journal:

July 9. To-day I revisited the tree where Livingstone died, and in order to guide others to the exact spot, in case this tree should disappear from any cause, I selected another big tree likely to last many years, cleared away two and a half square feet of its bark, and in the space marked as follows: "This tree is magnetic southwest of the tree where Livingstone's remains are buried, and is forty-five paces from it." I brought away a bit of the bark of the memorable tree--a dead part, so as not to be guilty of vandalism.[29]

Livingstone's grave is in a quiet nook, such as he himself desired, in the outskirts of a forest bordering on a grass plain where the roan buck and eland roam in safety. When I visited the place turtle-doves were cooing in the tree-tops, and a litter of young hyenas had been playing near by; in the low ground outside the hole leading to the cave were their recent tracks; they had scampered into safety at our approach.

[28] In the _Last Journals_ the date is May 1st; on the stone, May 4th. The attendants could not quite determine the day.

[29] The section of the tree containing the inscription made by Jacob Wainwright has been brought to England and deposited in the house of the Geographical Society.

LOCKE (John, author of the celebrated "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding"), 1632-1704. "_O, the depth of the riches of the goodness and knowledge of God!_"

Some authorities say his last words were, "Cease now;" to Lady Masham who was reading to him a Psalm of David.

LONGFELLOW (Henry Wadsworth), 1807-1882. "_Now I know that I must be very ill, since you have been sent for_," said to his sister who came from Portland, Me.

His last written lines (nine days before his death) were:

"Out of the shadows of night, The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere." --_The Bells of San Blas._

LOUIS I. (Louis le Débonnaire), 778-840. "_Huz! huz!_"

He turned his face to the wall and twice cried, "Huz! huz!" ("Out! out!") and then died. _Bouquet._

LOUIS IX. ("Saint Louis," canonized by Pope Boniface VIII. in 1297), 1215-1270. "_I will enter now into the house of the Lord._"

Some authorities say his last words were "We will go to Jerusalem."

LOUIS XIII. (son of Henry IV. and Marie de Médicis), 1601-1643. "_Well, my God, I consent with all my heart_," to his physician who told him he had but two hours to live.

LOUIS XIV. (surnamed LE GRAND, often called LOUIS QUATORZE, the most magnificent of the Bourbon Kings), 1638-1715. "Why weep ye? Did you think I should live forever?" then after a pause, "_I thought dying had been harder._" Some say his last words were: "O God, come to mine aid! O Lord, make haste to help me!"

On Sunday, August 31, towards eleven o'clock in the evening, the prayers for the dying were said for Louis XIV. He recited them himself in a louder voice than any of the spectators; and seemed still more majestic on his death-bed than on his throne. When the prayers were ended he recognized Cardinal de Rohan and said to him, "These are the graces of the Church." Several times he repeated: "_Nunc et in hora mortis._" Then he said, "O God, come unto mine aid; O Lord, make haste to help me." These were his last words. The agony was beginning. It lasted all night, and on Sunday, September 1, 1715, at a quarter past eight in the morning, Louis XIV., aged seventy-seven years lacking three days, during sixty-two of which he had been a king, yielded his great soul to God. _Imbert de Saint-Amand._

LOUIS XV. (of France), 1710-1774. "_Repeat those words Monsieur the almoner, repeat them_," to Cardinal de La Roche-Aymon, who read aloud the public apology made by the sovereign to his people.

Some authorities give his last words thus: "I have been a great sinner, doubtless, but I have ever observed Lent with a most scrupulous exactness; I have caused more than a hundred thousand masses to be said for the repose of unhappy souls, so that I flatter myself I have not been a very bad Christian."

A candle burning in the King's chamber, which was to be extinguished at the same moment as the life of the King, was the signal agreed on for the measures to be taken and the orders to be given as soon as he should have breathed his last. The candle was put out at two o'clock in the afternoon of May 10, 1774. Instantly a great tumult, comparable to a clap of thunder, shook the arches of Versailles. It was the crowd of courtiers leaving the antechambers of the dead man and noisily hastening to meet the new monarch. _Imbert de Saint-Amand: "The Last Years of Louis XV."_

LOUIS XVI. (guillotined by a wild and bloodthirsty mob, called the French Republic, the 21st of January, 1793), 1754-1793. "_Frenchmen, I die innocent of all the crimes which have been imputed to me. I forgive my enemies; I implore God, from the bottom of my heart, to pardon them, and not to take vengeance on the French nation for the blood about to be shed._"

He was proceeding, when Santerre, who was on horseback near the scaffold, made a signal for the drums to beat, when the assistants seized the victim, and the horrid murder was completed.

When the king's head was severed from the body, one of the executioners held it up by the hair, dancing at the same time around the scaffold, with the most savage exultation. _Contemporary History of the French Revolution._

LOUIS XVII. (second son of Louis XVI. He became dauphin at the death of an elder brother in 1789, and was recognized as king in January, 1793, by the French royalists and several foreign courts, but he was closely confined by the Jacobins. The cruel treatment which he received in prison hastened his death), 1785-1795. "_I have something to tell you._"

LOUIS XVIII. (Louis Stanislas Xavier), 1755-1824. "_A King should die standing._"

LOUISE (Auguste Wilhelmine Amelie, Queen of Prussia), 1776-1810. "_I am a Queen, but have no power to move my arms._"

LOVAT (Lord Fraser of Lovat, Scottish Jacobite conspirator. In the rebellion of 1745 he was detected in treasonable acts against King George, for which he was executed), about 1666-1747.

He was beheaded on Tower Hill. On reaching the scaffold, he asked for the executioner, and presented him with a purse containing ten guineas. He then asked to see the axe, felt its edge, and said he thought it would do. Next he looked at his coffin, on which was inscribed:

SIMON, DOMINUS FRASER DE LOVAT. Decollat April 9, 1747 Ætat suae 80.

After repeating some lines from Horace, and next from Ovid, he prayed, then bade adieu to his solicitor and agent in Scotland; finally the executioner completed his work, the head falling from the body. Lord Lovat was the last person beheaded in England. _Andrews: "Bygone Punishments."_

LUCAN or LUCANUS (Marcus Annæus, Roman epic poet, nephew of the philosopher Seneca), 38-65.

Lucan exhibited great apparent serenity at the approach of death. After the veins of his arm had been voluntarily opened, and he had lost a large quantity of blood, he felt his hands and his legs losing their vitality. As the hour of death approached, he commenced repeating several lines out of his own "Pharsalia," descriptive of a person similarly situated to himself. These lines he repeated until he died:

"_Asunder flies the man-- No single wound the gaping rupture seems, Where trickling crimson flows the tender streams; But from an opening horrible and wide A thousand vessels pour the bursting tide: At once the winding channel's course was broke, Where wandering life her mazy journey took._" _Winslow: "Anatomy of Suicide."_

LUCAS (Sir Charles. He commanded the right wing of the royal army at Marston Moor, was taken prisoner at Colchester, where he was put to death August 29th, 1648),--1648. "_Soldiers, fire!_" to the soldiers appointed to shoot him.

LULLI or LULLY (Jean Baptiste, Italian composer, called "the Father of French Dramatic Music"), 1633-1687. "_Sinner, thou must die._" In sign of his repentance he died with a halter around his neck, repeating and, sometimes singing, with tears of remorse, "Sinner, thou must die."

LUTHER (Martin, the greatest of the Protestant reformers), 1484-1546. "_Yes_," in response to the question whether he stood by the doctrines of Scripture as he had taught them.

The same man who could scold like a fishwife could be as gentle as a tender maiden. At times he was as fierce as the storm that uproots oaks; and then again he was as mild as the zephyr caressing the violets.... The refinement of Erasmus, the mildness of Melancthon, could never have brought us so far as the godlike brutality of brother Martin.--_Heine._

LYTTELTON (George, first Lord, English statesman, author of "Dialogues of the Dead," and "History of Henry II."), 1709-1773. "_Be good, be virtuous, my lord, you must come to this_," to his son-in-law, Lord Valentia.

MACAULAY (Thomas Babington, Lord), 1800-1859. "_I shall retire early; I am very tired_," said to his butler, who asked him if he would not rest on the sofa.

His mother resolved to spend the night at Holly Lodge. She had just left the drawing-room to make her preparations for the visit (it being, I suppose, a little before seven in the evening), when a servant arrived with an urgent summons. As we drove up to the porch of my uncle's house, the maids ran, crying, out into the darkness to meet us, and we knew that all was over. We found him in the library, seated in his easy chair, and dressed as usual; with his book on the table beside him, still open at the same page. He had told his butler that he should go to bed early, as he was very tired. The man proposed his lying on the sofa. He rose as if to move, sat down again, and ceased to breathe. He died as he had always wished to die--without pain; without any formal farewell; preceding to the grave all whom he loved; and leaving behind him a great and honorable name, and the memory of a life every action of which was clear and transparent as one of his own sentences.--_G. Otto Trevelyan._

MACCAIL (his given name has not been preserved, a Scots Covenanter who expired under torture in the time of Charles II. of England), 1668. He died in an ecstasy of joy, and his last words were: "_Farewell sun, moon and stars; farewell, world and time; farewell, weak and frail body; welcome, eternity; welcome, angels and saints; welcome, Saviour of the world; welcome, God, the Judge of all._"

MACHIAVELLI, or MACCHIAVELLI, sometimes MACHIAVEL (Nicholas, a celebrated atheist, and the author of "The Prince"), 1469-1530. "_I desire to go to hell, and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks, hermits, and apostles._"

MACKINTOSH (Sir James, philosopher and politician), 1765-1832. "_Happy!_"

MALHERBE (François de, the "Father of French lyric poetry"), 1555-1628. "_Hold your tongue; your wretched style only makes me out of conceit with them_," to his confessor, who was presenting the joys of heaven in vulgar and trite phrases.

His ruling passion was purity of diction. He would destroy a quire of paper in composing a single stanza; and it is said that during the twenty-five most prolific years of his life he made only about thirty-three verses a year.

MARAT (Jean Paul, court-physician, author of several scientific works, and later the main promoter of the Reign of Terror in France), 1743-1793. "_Help, my dear--help!_" As Marat uttered these words he fell at the feet of Charlotte Corday, and immediately expired.

Charlotte, motionless, and as if petrified at her crime, was standing behind the window curtain. The transparent material allowed her form to be easily distinguished. Laurent, taking up a chair, struck her a clumsy blow on the head, which knocked her to the floor, where Marat's mistress trampled her under foot in her rage. At the noise that ensued, and the cries of the two women, the occupants of the house hastened thither, neighbors and persons passing in the streets ascended the staircase and filled the room, the courtyard, and very speedily the whole quarter, demanding, with fierce exclamations, that they would throw the assassin out to them, that they might avenge the dead--yet still warm--body of the people's idol. Soldiers and national guards entered, and order was, in some measure, re-established. Surgeons arrived, and endeavored to stanch the wound. The reddened water gave to the sanguinary democrat the appearance of having died in a bath of blood.--_Larmartine._

The veneration for the monster Marat knew no bounds. Hymns were written in his honor. On divers stamps he was placed by the side of Christ. Men swore by the sacred heart of Marat. The new worship was complete, it had prostitutes for goddesses, and a man of violence and blood for a martyr and a saint. All it yet lacked was to engage in persecution; and it failed not in this worthy business.--_De Pressensé._

MARCUS (of Arethusa), being hung up in a basket smeared with honey, to be stung to death by bees, exclaimed,[30] "_How am I advanced, despising you that are upon the earth!_"

[30] To some of the most distinguished of our race death has come in the strangest possible way, and so grotesquely as to subtract greatly from the dignity of the sorrow it must certainly have occasioned. Æschylus, whose seventy tragedies, to say nothing of his many satiric dramas, have given their author an immortal name, was killed by the fall of a tortoise on his bald head from the talons of an eagle high in the air above him.

There was a singular propriety in the death of Anacreon by choking at a grape stone or a dried grape. The poet whose sweetest and most enticing lines celebrate wine and love came to his death at the ripe age of eighty-five from the fruit of the vine. Agathocles, the tyrant of Syracuse, was given by the treacherous Maenon a poisoned toothpick which soon rendered his mouth incurably gangrened, and deprived him of the power of speech. While in this miserable and helpless condition he was stretched upon the funeral pile and burned alive.

Fabius, the Roman praetor, died from the same cause that occasioned the death of Anacreon. A single goat hair in the milk he was drinking, lodged in his trachea and choked him. Chalchas, the soothsayer, outlived the time predicted for his death, which struck him as so comical that he burst into a fit of most immoderate laughter from which he died. Thus also died the famous Marquette, who was convulsed with a fatal merriment on seeing a monkey trying to pull on a pair of boots. Philomenes was seized with an equally disastrous merriment when he came suddenly upon an ass that was devouring with greediness the choice figs that had been prepared for his own desert.

Laughter killed the great Zeuxis, of whom Pliny relates the story of a trial of skill with the painter Parrhasius. The former painted a bunch of grapes that were so natural a bird endeavored to eat the fruit. Charles VIII., while gallantly conducting his queen into the tennis court, struck his head against the lintel and died soon after from the accident.

Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales, was struck by a cricket ball, which caused his death. A pig occasioned the death of Louis VI., the creature ran under the monarch's horse causing it to stumble. But of all strange deaths that of Itadach is the strangest. He expired from thirst while toiling in the harvest field, because, in obedience to the rule of St. Patrick, he would not drink "a drop of anything."

MARGARET (of Scotland, wife of Louis XI. of France), 1420-1445. "_Fi de la vie! qu'on ne m'en parle plus._"

Margaret was devoted to literature, and, while she lived, patronized men of learning and genius. Her admiration for the poet Alain Chartier is said to have induced her to kiss his lips as he sat asleep one day in a chair. Her attendants being astonished at this act of condescension, the princess replied that "she did not kiss the man, but the lips which had given utterance to so many exquisite thoughts." She died at the age of twenty-five, before her husband had ascended the throne. _Mrs. Hale's "Sketches of Distinguished Women."_

MARGARET (of Valois, Queen of Navarre and sister of Francis I., of France), 1492-1549. "_Farewell, and remember me._" Some say, upon what authority I do not know, that the queen's last words were: "I never departed from the true church."

She inclined to the Protestant faith, but Roman Catholic writers assert that before her death she acknowledged her religious errors, and De Remond even goes so far as to imply that she denied on her death-bed having ever swerved from the standard of Roman authority.--_Memoir of Margaret, attached to the English translation of her Heptameron._

She was a brilliant writer in both prose and verse, and was called the "Tenth Muse." Several authors speak of her as "Margaret the Pearl, surpassing all the pearls of the Orient." She composed a religious work called "Miroir de l'âme Pècheresse," which was condemned by the Sorbonne, on the ground that it inclined to Protestant doctrines. She also wrote the "Heptameron, or Novels of the Queen of Navarre."

MARIE ANTOINETTE (Marie Antoinette Josephine Jeanne de Lorraine, daughter of Francis I., Emperor of Germany, and Maria Thérèsa, and wife of Louis XVI., of France; she was guillotined October 16, 1793), 1755-1793. "_Farewell, my children, forever. I go to your father._"

The king perished on the scaffold January 21, 1793. The queen had four children, Marie Thérèse Charlotte, who married the oldest son of Charles X.; the dauphin, Louis, born in 1781 and died in 1789; Charles Louis, who died a victim to the brutality of the cobbler Simon; and a daughter who died in infancy.

MARTINEAU (Harriet, English author, and translator of "The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte"), 1802-1876. "_I have had a noble share of life, and I do not ask for any other life. I see no reason why the existence of Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated._"

During the last one-and-twenty years of her life, death was the idea most familiar and most welcome. It was spoken of and provided for with an easy freedom that I never saw approached in any other home, yet she never expressed a wish respecting a place of burial. But a few days before her death, when asked if she would be laid in the burial-place of her family, she assented; and she lies with her kindred, in the old cemetery at Birmingham.[31] _Maria Weston Chapman._