His eyes were fixed on the stars; his heart was ever set on those things that are above. These are the beautiful words in which he has described the object and the end of all his study:--
"To spring even a little way aloft, to carol for awhile in bright and sunny regions--to open the doors of the human mind to let in light and knowledge, always sure that right will come right at last--to rise to the level of our strength, and if we must sink again, to sink not exhausted but exercised, not dulled in spirit, but cheered in heart--such may be the contented and happy lot of him who can repose with equal confidence on the bosom of the earth, or ride above the mists of earth into the empyrean day."
He died loaded with honours in 1871, though no man sought fame or honour less.
"Enough if cleansed at last from earthly stain, My homeward step be firm, and pure my evening sky."
Thus had he written, and how could longing soar higher?
Charles Darwin was perhaps the greatest man of the three, for after long years of patient hard work, bravely carried on through bad health, he produced as the result of his experiments a wonderful book called "The Origin of Species," in which he explained how the world, instead of being created all at once as it is to-day, has grown slowly and very gradually, through many processes, just as we ourselves, our minds, and all our powers have developed from a state of savagery into our present state of civilisation. When first Darwin published his work explaining all this, some people were frightened and horrified, and declared that he wanted to upset all the old ideas about God and religion. But thus they had said whenever a new discovery had been made, and yet with each new discovery we have only learnt more and more how great God is, and how--
"He moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."
So all such great discoverers as Newton, Herschel, and Darwin give us in reality the same message, which is never to be afraid of truth, for truth comes from God, and the only danger is when we doubt, even for a moment, that it must come triumphant out of every honest discussion.
When William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, was buried in the north transept at Westminster Abbey in the year 1778, Parliament having decreed that "he ought to be brought near to the dust of kings," and not lie in St. Paul's Cathedral, earnestly though the City of London begged for this favour, he drew to that part of the Abbey so many distinguished ministers of the Crown, that it soon received the name of the Statesmen's Corner, in distinction to the Poets' Corner which Chaucer had created. Pitt the elder and Pitt the younger, Fox, Canning, Palmerston, Castlereagh, Grattan, and Gladstone--these are the names which most closely belong to the Statesmen's Corner, and through their lives we can catch glimpses of English political life from the reign of George II. down to our own day.