Part 17

STANLEY (Arthur Penrhyn, Dean of Westminster, and the leader of the "Broad Church" party), 1815-1881. "_So far as I have understood what the duties of my office were supposed to be, in spite of every incompetence, I am yet humbly trustful that I have sustained before the mind of the nation the extraordinary value of the Abbey as a religious, national and liberal institution._" Later he said: "_The end has come in the way in which I most desired it should come. I could not have controlled it better. After preaching one of my sermons on the beatitudes, I had a most violent fit of sickness, took to my bed, and said immediately that I wished to die at Westminster. I am perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied; I have no misgivings._" His last recorded words were: "_I wish Vaughan to preach my funeral sermon, because he has known me longest._"

STEELE (Miss Anne, the author of many beautiful and familiar hymns), 1716-1778: "_I know that my Redeemer liveth._" The following lines are inscribed on her tomb:

Silent the lyre, and dumb the tuneful tongue, That sung on earth her dear Redeemer's praise; But now in heaven she joins the angelic song, In more harmonious, more exalted lays.

STEPHEN (first Christian martyr), "_Lord, lay not this sin to their charge._"--_Acts vii: 60._

STEVENS (Thaddeus, American statesman and opponent of slavery; a man of great ability and nobleness of spirit), 1793-1868.

Two colored clergymen called and asked leave to see Stevens and pray with him. He ordered them to be admitted; and when they had come to his bedside, he turned and held out his hand to one of them. They sang a hymn and prayed. During the prayer he responded twice, but could not be understood. Soon afterward the Sisters of Charity prayed, and he seemed deeply affected. The doctor told him that he was dying. He made a motion with his head, but no other reply. One of the sisters asked leave to baptize him, and it was granted, but whether by Stevens or his nephew is not clear. She performed the ceremony with a glass of water, a portion of which was poured upon his forehead. The end came before the beginning of the next day. He lay motionless for a few moments, then opened his eyes, took one look, placidly closed them, and, without a struggle, the great commoner had ceased to breathe. _Samuel W. McCall: "Life of Stevens."_

On his monument reared over his grave are inscribed by his direction, these words: "I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race by charter rules, I have chosen this, that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life, (the) equality of Man before his Creator."

STEVENSON (Robert Louis, English author), 1850-1894. "_What is that?_" He felt a sudden pain in his head, and, clasping his forehead with both hands, he exclaimed, "What is that?" and soon after ceased to breathe.[43]

The Academy tells this of Stevenson: "An old friend had set his beautiful lines to music:

Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live, and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

"He said one evening at his happy home in Merton Abbey, before he started on his last journey, that, when out in the Sudan, he crooned himself to sleep night after night with those lines which had been set to music by his friend. It is fitting that he should lie at rest out there in the spacious country, under the wide and starry sky."

[43] According to a writer in the Chicago "Open Court," the main cause of the death of Robert Louis Stevenson was probably his consumption of tobacco. Two years before his death he confessed that his bill for cigars amounted to $450 a year; and during the last six months of his life he smoked an average of forty cigarettes per day, and often as many as eighty in twenty-four hours. Can any one wonder that this frightful habit induced chronic insomnia, to cure or lessen which he smoked all night, till narcosis of the brain brought on stupefaction and temporary loss of consciousness--for weeks his nearest approach to refreshing slumber. His physician warned him in vain that he was burning life's candle at both ends, for he tried to write in spite of his misery; but he stuck to nicotine as the only specific for his nervousness, with the result that was inevitable,--his death a year afterwards.-- _Mathews: "Nugæ Litterariæ."_

STONEHOUSE (Sir James, English physician and clergyman), 1716-1795. "_Precious salvation!_"

STROZZI (Filippo, Florentine statesman), 1488-1538. He committed suicide while imprisoned by Cosmo de' Medici, the first Great Duke of Tuscany. As he was dying he cut with the point of his sword upon the mantel-piece, this line from Virgil: "_Exariare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor._"

SUMNER (Charles, distinguished United States Senator and opponent of slavery. He was a man of great learning in history, political science and polite literature; and, notwithstanding the rare culture of his mind and tastes, he was always the defender of the poor and enslaved), 1811-1874. "_Sit down_," to his friend, Hon. Samuel Hooper. As he uttered these words his heart ruptured, a terrible convulsion shook his frame, and death came at once.[44]

A few hours before Sumner died Judge Hoar gave him a message from Ralph Waldo Emerson, to which Sumner replied with some difficulty, "Tell Emerson that I love and revere him." Over and over again he said to Judge Hoar, "Do not let the Civil Rights bill fail!" To the last his mind was engaged upon the great problems of national interest that had occupied him during all the stormy days of the Civil War.

[44] Rupture of the heart, it is believed, was first described by Harvey; but since his day several cases have been observed. Morgagni has recorded a few examples: Amongst them that of George II., who died suddenly, of this disease in 1760; and, what is very curious, Morgagni himself fell a victim to the same malady. Dr. Elliotson, in his Lumleyan Lecture on Diseases of the Heart, in 1839, stated that he had only seen one instance; but in the Cyclopædia of Practical Medicine, Dr. Townsend gives a table of twenty-five cases, collected from various authors. Generally this accident is consequent upon some organic disease, such as fatty degeneration; but it may arise from violent muscular exertion, or strong mental emotions.--_Welby: "Mysteries of Life, Death and Futurity."_

Dr. William Stroud endeavors to prove, in his "The Physical Cause of the Death of Christ," that our Saviour died upon the cross from rupture of the heart, produced by agony of mind. He says: "In the garden of Gethsemane Christ endured mental agony so intense that, had it not been limited by divine interposition, it would probably have destroyed his life without the aid of any other sufferings; but having been thus mitigated, its effects were confined to violent palpitation of the heart, accompanied with bloody sweat. On the cross this agony was renewed, in conjunction with the ordinary sufferings incidental to that mode of punishment; and having at this time been allowed to proceed to its utmost extremity without restraint, occasioned sudden death by rupture of the heart, intimated by a discharge of blood and water from his side, when it was afterward pierced with a spear."

SVETCHINE, or SWETCHINE (Sophia Soymonof, a Russian lady and writer), 1782-1857. Madame Svetchine's last words were, "_It will soon be time for mass. They must raise me._" She was a most devoted Roman Catholic.

SWARTZ (Frederick Christian, Missionary in India), 1726-1798. "_Had it pleased my Lord to spare me longer I should have been glad. I should then have been able to speak yet a word to the sick and poor; but His will be done! May He, in mercy, but receive me! Into Thy hands I commend my spirit; Thou hast redeemed me, O Thou faithful God._" After this his Malabar helpers sang a portion of a hymn and he endeavored to sing with them, but his strength failing, he soon expired in the arms of a native Christian.

SWEDENBORG (Emanuel, Swedish seer, philosopher and theologian), 1688-1772. "_It is well; I thank you; God bless you._" He told the Shearsmiths on what day he should die; and the servant remarked: "He was as pleased as I should have been if I was to have a holiday, or was going to some merry-making."

His faculties were clear to the last. On Sunday afternoon, the 29th day of March, 1772, hearing the clock strike, he asked his landlady and her maid, who were both sitting at his bed-side, what o'clock it was; and upon being answered it was five o'clock, he said--"It is well; I thank you; God bless you;" and a little after, he gently departed.[45] _White's "Life and Writings of Swedenborg."_

[45] Swedenborg was buried in the vault of the Swedish Church in Prince's Square, on April 5, 1772. In 1790, in order to determine a question raised in debate, viz., whether Swedenborg was really dead and buried, his wooden coffin was opened, and the leaden one was sawn across the breast. A few days after, a party of Swedenborgians visited the vault. "Various relics" (says White: "_Life of Swedenborg_," 2nd ed., 1868, p. 675) "were carried off: Dr. Spurgin told me he possessed the cartilage of an ear. Exposed to the air, the flesh quickly fell to dust, and a skeleton was all that remained for subsequent visitors.... At a funeral in 1817, Granholm, an officer in the Swedish Navy, seeing the lid of Swedenborg's coffin loose, abstracted the skull, and hawked it about amongst London Swedenborgians, but none would buy. Dr. Wählin, pastor of the Swedish Church, recovered what he supposed to be the stolen skull, had a cast of it taken, and placed it in the coffin in 1819. The cast which is sometimes seen in phrenological collections is obviously not Swedenborg's: it is thought to be that of a small female skull."

SWIFT (Jonathan, Dean of Saint Patrick's, Dublin, and author of "The Tale of a Tub," and "Travels of Lemuel Gulliver"), 1667-1745. "_It is folly; they had better leave it alone_," to his house-keeper who informed him that the usual bonfires and illuminations were preparing to do honor to his birthday. Some say his last words were, "_Ah, a German! a prodigy, admit him!_" spoken as Handel was announced.

TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD (Charles Maurice, celebrated French diplomatist), 1754-1838, "_I am suffering, sire, the pangs of the damned._" Said to the king, Louis Phillippe, who enquired his condition.

Louis Blanc (_Histoire de Dix Ans. v. 290_) says that when Louis Philippe called upon Talleyrand during that prince's last hours, he enquired if he suffered: "_Yes, comme un damné_," answered Talleyrand; at which the king said under his breath, "What, already?" (Quoi, déjà?)

TALMA (François Joseph, "The Garrick of the French Stage"), 1770-1826. "_The worst is I can not see._"

He was interred, according to his own directions, in the cemetery of Père-la-Chaise, Paris, without any religious ceremony, but funeral orations by Jouy and Arnault were delivered at the grave. To change, it is alleged, his resolution on this score, the Archbishop of Paris had sought an interview, but in vain. Talma's conduct, it is supposed, proceeded from his resentment at the excommunication pronounced by the Roman Catholic Church against actors.

TASSO (Torquato), 1544-1595. "_Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit._"

When a guest of Rome, lodged in the Vatican, waiting to be crowned with laurel--the first poet so honored since Petrarch--he sighed to flee away and be at rest. Growing very ill, he obtained permission to retire to the Monastery of Saint Onofrio. When the physician informed him that his last hour was near, he embraced him, expressed his gratitude for so sweet an announcement, and then, lifting his eyes, thanked God that after so tempestuous a life he was now brought to a calm haven. The Pope having granted the dying poet a plenary indulgence, he said, "This is the chariot on which I hope to go crowned, not with laurel as a poet into the capital, but with glory as a saint into heaven." _Alger's "Genius of Solitude."_

Just before his death he requested Cardinal Cynthia to collect his works and commit them to the flames, especially his "Jerusalem Delivered."

TAYLOR (Bayard, traveller, poet and lecturer; the translator of Goethe's "Faust"), 1825-1878. "_I want, oh, you know what I mean, the stuff of life._"

TAYLOR (Edward T., an American preacher known as "Father Taylor"), 1793-1871. "_Why, certainly, certainly!_" These words were spoken to a friend who asked him if Jesus was precious. He became a sailor, and was for many years the chaplain of the Seamen's Bethel, Boston.

TAYLOR (Jane, writer for the young), 1783-1823. "_Are we not children, all of us?_"

TAYLOR (Jeremy, distinguished bishop in the English Church, and author of "Holy Living and Dying." He has been called "The Shakspeare of Divines"), 1613-1667. "_My trust is in God._"

TAYLOR (John, "The Water Poet." He followed for a long time the occupation of waterman on the Thames, and later kept a public house in Phoenix Alley, Long Acre), 1580-1654. "_How sweet it is to rest!_"

TAYLOR (Rev. Dr. Rowland), --1555. He said as he was going to martyrdom, "I shall this day deceive the worms in Hadley churchyard."[46] And when he came within two miles of Hadley, "Now," said he, "lack I but two stiles; and I am even at my Father's house." His last words were, "_Lord, receive my spirit._"

[46] Being asked by the sheriff to explain these words, he said: "I am as you see, a man that hath a very great carcass, which I thought should have been buried in Hadley churchyard, if I had died in my bed, as I well hoped I should have done. But herein I see I was deceived. And there are a great number of worms in Hadley churchyard, which should have had jolly feeding upon this carrion which they have looked for many a day. But now I know we be deceived, both I and they; for this carcass must be burnt to ashes, and so shall they lose their bait and feeding that they looked to have had of it." Fox, the martyrologist, adds that, "when the sheriff and his company heard these words they were amazed, and looked at one another, marvelling at the man's constant mind, that thus without all fear made but a jest at the cruel torment and death now at hand prepared for him."

TAYLOR (Zachary, American general and twelfth President of the United States), 1784-1850. "_I am about to die. I expect the summons soon. I have endeavored to discharge all my official duties faithfully. I regret nothing, but am sorry that I am about to leave my friends._"

TENDERDEN (Lord), "_Gentlemen of the jury, you will now consider of your verdict._"

TENNENT (William, Pastor of Presbyterian Church in Freehold, N. J. His name has been rendered famous by his peculiar experience which at the time attracted the attention of the entire country. During an attack of fever, he fell into a trance which continued three days. He was supposed to be dead, and was prepared for burial; but suddenly he recovered, and gave a description of what he had seen in the Heavenly world. He never doubted to the last day of his life that he had seen the New Jerusalem during the three days of his trance. Elias Boudinot published a circumstantial account of the wonderful vision), 1705-1777. "_I am sensible of the violence of my disorder, and that it is accompanied with symptoms of approaching dissolution; but, blessed be God, I have no wish to live, if it should be His will to call me hence._"

TENNYSON (Alfred, Lord, Poet-laureate of England), 1809-1892. "_I have opened it._" These are the last words of the poet that have been made public; later he bade his family farewell, but what he said has never been published.

His last food was taken at a quarter of four, and he tried to read, but could not. He exclaimed, "I have opened it." Whether this referred to the Shakspeare, opened by him at

Hang there like fruit, my soul, Till the tree die,

which he always called among the tenderest lines in Shakspeare, or whether one of his last poems, of which he was fond, was running through his head I cannot tell:

Fear not, thou, the hidden purpose of that Power Which alone is great, Nor the myriad world, his shadow, nor the silent Opener of the Gate.

He then spoke his last words, a farewell blessing to my mother and myself.

For the next hours the full moon flooded the room and the great landscape outside with light; and we watched in solemn stillness. His patience and quiet strength had power upon those who were nearest and dearest to him; we felt thankful for the love and the utter peace of it all; and his own lines of comfort from "_In Memoriam_" were strongly borne in upon us. He was quite restful, holding my wife's hand, and, as he was passing away, I spoke over him his own prayer, "God accept him! Christ receive him!" because I knew that he would have wished it. _Alfred, Lord Tennyson, a Memoir by his son._

TERCHOUT (Adèle--"La Comète"). The gay and thoughtless life of this beautiful young woman ended in sad regrets and bitter remembrances, and yet there is some slight hope that there was with her at last a thought real, if not deep, of better things.

Does any one remember a beautiful girl who went by the nickname of "La Comète," and flashed through the Parisian world during the last year of the Second Empire? She was called "Comet" on account of the exceeding length and loveliness of her golden hair. Théophile Gautier wrote a sonnet to her, Cabanel painted her portrait. Worth dressed her, and Léon Cugnot took her as the model of his statue, "La Baigneuse." Her real name was Adèle Terchout, and just before the Franco-German war broke out she declined an offer of marriage from an elderly duke, with a very ancient escutcheon. At that time she owned one of the finest mansions in the Champs Elysées, had twelve horses in her stables and a bushel of diamonds in her dressing-case. Last week this dazzling creature died in a Parisian hospital absolutely destitute, and the disease which carried her off was the most hideous that could befall a pretty woman--a lupus vorax, or cancer in the face, which totally disfigured her. Like Zola's "Nana," the only vestige left of her beauty when she died was her matchless hair, which measured nearly five feet. _London Truth._

THEOPHRASTUS (eminent Greek philosopher. He was a favorite pupil of Aristotle whom he succeeded as President of the Lyceum B. C. 322), about B. C. 374-286. This philosopher's last words are not recorded, but on his death-bed he accused Nature of cruelty. He charged her with having-given a long life to stags and crows, and only a short one to men and women who are so much better able to use for their own good and that of others length of days. He declared that human beings needed long life for the perfection of art. He complained that as soon as he had begun to perceive the beauty of the world he was called upon to die.[47]

[47] Thus also did Themistocles, the most renowned of Grecian generals, grieve that when he had acquired the wisdom necessary for a useful life, it was time to die.

THERESA or TERESA ("Saint," Spanish nun, author of a number of devotional books, a visionary of whom many wonderful miracles are related. She was canonized by Pope Gregory XV.), 1515-1582. "_Over my spirit flash and float in divine radiancy the bright and glorious visions of the world to which I go._" The claim of celestial illumination was made by her throughout her entire life and in the hour of death, but just what were her last words is very uncertain.

At her death-bed the bystanders beheld her already in glory; to one she appeared in the midst of angels, another saw floating over her head a heavenly light that descended and hovered about her,[48] another discovered spiritual beings clothed in white entering her cell, another saw a white dove fly from her mouth up to heaven, while at the same time a dead tree near the sacred spot suddenly burst into the fullness of bloom.[49]

After her death she appeared to a nun and said that she had not died of disease, but of the intolerable fire of divine love. _Salazar: "Anamuesis Sanctorum Hispanorum."_

[48] The luminous faces and bodies of martyrs and saints are common enough in the chronicles of mediæval miracles. Some modern physicians think there were physiological causes for the strange and, at the time, startling phenomena.

Bartholin, in his treatise "De Luce Hominum et Brutorum" (1647), gives an account of an Italian lady whom he designates as "mulier splendens," whose body shone with phosphoric radiations when gently rubbed with dry linen; and Dr. Kane, in his last voyage to the polar regions, witnessed almost as remarkable a case of phosphorescence. A few cases are recorded by Sir H. Marsh, Professor Donovan and other undoubted authorities, in which the human body, shortly before death, has presented a pale, luminous appearance.

On the eve of St. Alcuin's death (May 19th, 804), the entire monastery was enveloped in a mysterious light, so that many thought the building was on fire. The soul of the saint was seen to ascend in the form of a dove, and the spectators heard celestial music in the air.--_Early Superstitions._

The soul of St. Engelbert while going up to heaven was so bright that St. Hermann mistook it for the moon.

Andrew Jackson Davis (the "Poughkeepsie Seer") records that while in the clairvoyant condition he saw the entire process of the soul's disengagement from the body.--"_The Great Harmonia_," _vol._ I, _p._ 163.

[49] It was commonly believed that the immortal soul escaped from the dead body through the mouth. Sometimes it passed out under the form of a bird, and sometimes it seemed to be a vapor. The appearance of the departing soul is mentioned as a known fact, by the celebrated mystic, Jacob Böhmen, in his curious book. "_The Three Principles_," where it is described as that of "a blue vapor going forth out of the mouth of a dying man, which maketh a strong smell all over the chamber."

THOREAU (Henry David, American author and naturalist), 1817-1862. "_I leave this world without a regret._"

He was bred to no profession; and it is said that he never went to church, never voted, and never paid a tax to the state though he was imprisoned for not doing so. He ate no flesh, drank no wine, never knew the use of tobacco, and never (though a naturalist) used either trap or gun.--_Emerson._

He lived in the simplest manner; he sometimes practised the business of land-surveyor. In 1845 he built a small frame house on the shore of Walden Pond, near Concord, where he lived two years as a hermit, in studious retirement. He published an account of this portion of his life, in a small book entitled "Walden."--_Lippincott._