The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-07-23 00:00:00

THE STOTTEEItrDGE OBSERVER.

span, can hardly be said to have been cut short before
its work was done. His spirit is an abiding influence
in the ecclesiastical life of the age, and though he is
now gone from among us his name will long be
honoured in the annals of the English Church.' . . .

After his appointment to the Deanery of West-
minster, the outward circumstances of tor. Stanley
life uncjerwent no further change. It is probable tlat,
had he been so minded, he might have occupied a seat
on the Episcopal Bench; but he preferred the unique
position in the Church for which he was so eminently
suited that it is difficult to think of him apart from
the Royal Abbey of Westminsterorto think of any one
else in his place. His professional career was thus
a -strangely exceptional one. Though' he was one-
cessively a 'Member of three Chapters and the con-
spicuous head of one, though his influence in the
Church was hardly surpassed by ,that of any of his
c.ontepiporaries though he was one of the most elo-
quent and attractive preachers of his time, lie never
held a- cure of souls, and his nearest contatt with
ordinary clerical life was probably found in his early
experience as Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of
London. But the brilliant Dean of Westminster had
other- and, for a man of his temperament and genius,
higher work to do than that of devotion to the
ordinary tasks of the Christian ministry. He became
as of right a leader in the Church, though he never
ceased to be an accomplisherrinan of the world, in the
hest sense of the phrase. We have already dwelt on his
rare literary gifts, and his fame as a preacher is so uni-
versal that it needs no comment and no extended
chronicle. In his administration of the Abbey, again,
his deeds speak for themselves. No Dean of West-
minster has been more generous than he has in offering
the coveted meed of sepulture within its precincts to
the remains of great Englishmen who died in his time.
He thought only of their fame and greatness and never
of their party, their sect, or their opinions. If he was
thought by some to be somewhat too liberal in this
respect, it will also be Lcknowledged that.the fault
was one which le .ned to virtue's side, and that the
task of selection was such that no man could hope to
discharge it, as he did, without giving offence to
some.

Many anxious inquiries were made in the House of Com-
mons on Monday night as to the,state of Dean Stanley. At
eleven o'clock Mr. Lynlph Stanley coming with the latest
bulletins, Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster left the Treasury
Bench and went down to the Bar, where Mr. Stanley was
standing, to make inquiries. The information at this time
was that the Dean was sinking fast, Intelligence was sub-
sequently brought to the House that he died quietly and
without suffering shortly before midnight.

The congregation which had gathered only so late as
Sunday last in the hope of hearing Dean Stanley preach
probably represented, as his vast audiences in the Abbey
always did, a more widely gathered, more variously con-
stituted assembly than any other preacher on this side of
the Atlantic ever attracts. Men of all classes and ail creeds
found something in his sermons which stimulated their
religious feeling and qubkencd their thought. Strangers
asked Jii wonder whether the frail-looking and bowed
form before them could be that of the Dean of Westminster.
They wondered even more that the somewhat feeble voice
and quiet,,though earned and convinced delivery could
belong to the preacher whom th,ey had come from
so far to hear. The matter of the dlscours9, how-
ever, in the wide sympathy it showed for all that is good iu.
all sorts and conditions of men; and for its hearty recogni-
tion of the the'place and function of all sects and churches
in the evangelistic work of the Christian faith, left no doubt
that it was the most popular and best known representative
of the Broad Church who was really addressing them.—
Daily News. .

Dolor Sta. -loss will be felt all _over the Chriatieu
world, and in every religions communion—in Scotch masses
as well as in English parsonages, in the homes of Russian
priests arid of American preachers. Burke describes it as
one of the duties of a universal religion to address itself to
all ranks arid conditions, to rear its mitred front in palaces
as well as to approaoh in humble guise the homes of
the poor. Like death ip the Roman poet's verse it
knocks with equal foot at all menie doors. Dear Stanley
was perhaps by temperament and training a minister of
religion to the wealthy and the educated rather than to the
very poor and uninstructed, whom, however, his t indlY
heart did not neglect. He was perhaps, though in no
unworthy sense, a courtier, and it is to the credit of
the Queen that such men as he should have been among
her cherished advisers. His mind was eminently a
reconciling one. Persons of every variety of faith and of
none, theologians ei all schools, men of science and men of
letters, will feel that they havo losf, in him one in whose
genial and sympathetic human nature they fennd a kind of
mediatorial influence, arid pointe of contaet and copenrd,
which they mi eht not have discovered if they had been left to
themselves. Perhaps no man in England had a character
batter adapted to secure popularity, and a nature more
scornful of the arts by which popularity is often won.—
Lewlee in the Daily News.

." Looking back on the record of this long and well-spent
life, all reuA acknowledge that Dean Stanley will be known
to posterity less for what he has done in the way of said and
lasting achievements, either theological, literary, or practical,
than by what he was, and the influence which his words and
character have exerted over every class of his countrymen.
Ms no exaggeration to describe him as the typical Broad
Chnrehman of the nineteenth century. He belonged to the
famous school of the Xingsleys, the Maurices, and the
Ri,bertsons, and he enjoyed the rare good fortune to have
hid his early opinions moulded and formed in boyhood by
one of the greatest Englishmen of our times, To Dr. Arnold
of Rugby, the eminent historian and divine, Arthur Stanley
owed really all that he was in after life."—Daily Telegraph.

"We have already mentioned that Dr. Stanley Was
chosen by the Queen to accompany- the Prince of Wales on
his Eastern tour in 1862. In 1863, when the Deanery of
Westminster became vaerint by the nomination of Dr.
Trench to the archbishopric of Dublin, Pr. Stanley wise ap-
pointed to that aim /Ls appointment was made the
subject of a controversy and a protest raised by the present
Bishop of Lincoln, who was at that time one of the Canons
of Westminster. It Is needless to dwell on the details of a
painful and fruitless controversy, which was brought to a
graceful termination by the just and eloquent tribute
paid by the new Dean to the Canon in his inaugural sermon
preached in Wtstminster Abbey. In the same year the
Dean was married to Lady Angusta. Bruce, sister of Lord
Elgin, and for many years a personal friend and attendant of
the Queen. his marriage gradually drew the Dean rrom the
comparative retirement of his former life into the choicest
circles of London society, intellectual, literary, political,
and aristocratic. Re was wont to • say that he had
never really lived mita his marriage.' Ills friends
had alwayi been arnong the leading Spirits •of the
time, and his house at 'Oicloyd wus renowned
for his abundant and catholic hospitality. But In
London he moved in a larger circle, and under the
auspices of Lady Augusta Stanley the deanery at Westminster
became one of the most distinguished salons in London. Of
the share borne by Lady Augusta in all her husband's labours
and iptirsaite, 0; the assistance she afforded him in his
great task of rendering the 4bbel
4accessible to visitors,
and enabling them to realise its hlsscriesl asseciatiqns in
comfort and decency, we spoke on the occasion of her
lamented death in 1876. The Dean himself thus chronicled
his, irreparable loss in a few pregnant words at
the close ot his memoir of his mother That sth uf
Mareh '—on which his mother died—' was the Ash Wednes-
day of 1-68, when he surviving son was absent in attend-
ance on the Prince of Wale, n a journey through Egypt
and Palestine. On another Ash 'Wednesday, the 1:4•0 of
March, 1876, he stood by the deathbed of her by vihosit
supporting love he had been 'comforted after his mother's
death,' and whose character, although east in another
monld, remains to him, with that of his mother the brightest
and most secred vision of his earthly experience.' "—Obi-
tuary notice in The 2'inve4.

The St. James's Gazette says Only five days ago Dean
Stanley wrote to us a very characteristic letter, in which,'
responding to a suggestion that a monument should be
raiSed to niark the common pit' into which the bodies of
the . great Protector's kinsfolk and friends were cast when
they were turned out Of Westminster Abbey, he said that he
had already taken thought about it; and would 'erect a
monument to 'those heroes and victims of popular triumph
and-popular vengeance' as soon as he could tad a fit
motto from some great English writer to inscribe upon
it. These are the last words he ever wrote for the public;
and now his own grave is being prepared. His time of pain
and, dread, if death concerned him much, was very brief;
for which we may all be glad. And though his years were
not many, though he. could hardly be called an old man, his
life had been a very full one, abounding in useful work and
fruitful of good example. He was not a great churchman.
many a man there is in the church and out of it who has
done far more for what is called the advancement of religion;
a work, indeed, which can only be done well by more fervid
and miltant spirits. But few men have done as much in our
;hue to preach and diffuse the nobler social virtues—for
temperance, toleration, courtesy, charity; for goodwill
amongst men ; for peape neither sluggish nor seltish, but
busy with good works and adorned by all the arts. Such a
man gives much to his time; and his death earths up one of
the little springs (there are not too many of them) which,
flowing tranquilly but brightly through the world, cool, and
fertilize, and beautify what without them would be little
better than a waste for the greater and thelesser greeds to
war upon,'

The Rev. Newman Hall, opening a meeting on Tuesday
night at Mr. Spurgeon's Tabernacle, paid a merited tribute
to the memory of the late Dean Stanley. Each day, ob-
served Mr. Newman Hall, brings its trials and its sor-
rows, and to-day we mourned the departure from
amongst us of the Dean of Westminster—of the goad
and noble-minded Dean Stinky. One who, during a
long and well spent life, had been so useful, so learned,
so feeling uTito had consecrated his splendid
talents and learning to the powers of truth—had passed
away from amongst the people whom he so loved. posspaed
of a large and loving heart, he ever threw ids Powerful
advocacy and influence on the side of charity and brotherly
love. They rejoiced in the hope that the Dean had gone
to live amongst the grand ones who had preceded him,
and, fortifjed by this hope, they blessed God for that
immortality which MO felt Dean Stanley, by his good life,
had earned.

One of the last acts of the Dean in regard to the Abbey waS
to give instructions concerning some points he desired to
have mentioned in the funeral sermon on Lord Hatheriey,
and effect was given to his wishes in the tiiscourse which
was preached on Sunday morning.

In a leader on the death of Dean Stanley, the Daily
Telegraph'says :
It is no secret that the venerable ecclesiastic whose loss
the conntry mourns to-day enjoyed to an unusual extent the
confidence and Weal= of Ills Sovereign. At a camparative
early age Dean Stanley was selected to apcompaey the
Prince of Wales on his educational tour to the Holy
Land, and the practical fruit of that expedition, as far
as the Dean is concerned, is seen in the publication
soon afterwards of his works on the Jewish Church,
with the many picturesque and descriptive touches in
which the Dean was so great a master, and which he
owed te that brief sojourn in Palestine. Besides this, the
Queen always liononted Lady angusta Stanley, the Deates
deceased Wife, with her most intitnatp friendship The
exalted occupant of the Throne found in Lady Augusta a
sympathetic and congenial companion, it modern Dorcas,
who gave all her time to good works, and to benefiting her
less fortunate fellow-subjects. In the numerous philan-
thropic schemes and institutions with which Lady Augusta
Stanley's name was associated, Dean Stanley was the wise
counsellor whose advice and never-failing sympathy directed
and encouraged the efforts of his consort. To a
man of so highly sensitive and delicate an organisation it
must have been a severe blow when, some years ago, his
wife was take!' from him after a happy companionship ex-
tending throughout their married life. Now the husband
has followed his wife into the 141*.10iiy land, and the raoks of
English Churz;lananship have thereby sitllerP4 a serious,
and, indeed, an irreparable blow Dean Stanley's
great natural gifts of intellect were enhanced by a
lively devotion to truth, by a modest refinement of
character, and by profound sympathy With the joys,
the sufferings, and the spiritual aspirations of all classes
of his couutrynien, from the highest to the humblest
Never was he so happy as when explaining the glories of the
Abbey to a number of working men, and building up prac-
tical lessons of use for everyday life out of the great his-
historical past of that noble edifice. It will, indeed, be a
hard teak to attempt adequately to fill the place which is
left vacant by the death of so ripe a scholar, so tolerant and
large-ndrided a divine, and such a typical representative of
one of the three great "schools" into which English
religious thought is divided. ,

The Daily News of Wednesday said.—The simple facte
published hi yesterday's paper embody 'the whole story of
Dean Stanley's last moments. For two days his friends
were unceasingly by his bedside, and some of them from
almost the first feared the worst. When towards sunset
on Monday it became definitely known that the fatal
erysipelas had reached the shoulders and chest,- of
the sufferer, and was making his breathing laboured, the
end became a question of but a few hours, and finally,
sinking gradually, scarcely conscious, and without ap-
w parent pain, the Dean's breath grew fainter and fainter
. •

until it softly ceased. It was- just that falling easily asleep
which, to the friends of a good man, imparts to recollections
of his death-bed a comforting element ,of satisfaction and
hope. . . ~There,are some persons no 'doubt to whom the
death of -.Dean Stanley will scarcely'ause surprise. The
writer of these lines happened to be one of the small party
going, after a few years' absence from the country to the
Westminster Abbey service on Good Friday afternoon.
to hear the Dean, and they were painfully struck with
the manner in which he had waxed old since they last
saw him. It was not so much the additional stoop of the
slender frame, or the far off sound of the never strong voice,
which gave this impression, as that indescribable grey hue of
the features which so often, without apparent cause,
proves to be the forerunner of death. There was a some-
thing, too, in the manner and matter of the sermon
which strengthened the impression. The text was from
the words Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,"
and the Dean, opening out a well rumpled blue MS., said
that he preached the same sermon, at a corresponding
service, in the same pulpit ten yea-go, and should like to
preach it once more. The solemattin.ren to the " once more"
had an immediate effect upon the cro*deil congregation, who,
suddenly hushing, remained breathlessly silent to the end.
The preaeher, in his well-known graphic and sympathetic
style, an effective through its non-pretence of style, told of
the great men of history who had upon their death-beds
found peace and solace in this particular text, and drew a
radiant picture of the end of the perfect man, who could, as
they did, repeat the words with dying lips. At the close of
the service a white-haired old gentleman was observed being
led very slowly by a friend towards the western door. He had
sat in the stall during the sermon as he had satin it for many
, a year before. The incident may be here aptly recounted,
, for the octogenai ian worshipper was Lord Hatherley. The
last.glperal service in the Abbey was for him, and almost
the last subject which occupied the Dean's practical atten-
tion was the manner in which the life and death of an
eminent legal dignitary, who was fur many years one of the
most regular Sunday-school teachers in Westminster, should
be improved from the Abbey pulpit. The Dean was, how-
ever, too ill on Sunday last to preach the sermon he had in
all probability prepared.

The Court circular contains the subjoined, dated
Osborne, July 19 :
" The Queen learnt this morning with profound grief the
sad news of the death of the Dean of Westminster, in whom
the Church and nation have lost one of their noblest and
most gifted members.

"InadditLon to the deep sorrow for so great a national
loss, the queen feels that death has removed another of her
Majesty's most trusted friends and advisers."

The Berlin papers speak with great regret of Dean
Stanley's death. They describe him as one of the
chief ornaments of the Church.and of English society.
Ef is disposition, the ragfidatt says was eminently con-
ciliatory, and complete tolerance 'towards every kind
of religious belief his rule of life. As a preacher he
was obpost perfect; and as a author he was a master
2
of style,

All the New York morning papers have published
long obituary notices of Dean Stanley. The Herald
says the announcement of his death will be received
with sadness throughout America, where his name
was a; well known as in E.ngland, and particularly by
the many friends to whom he endeared'himself during
his sojourn in this country. The Trihune says that the
memory of his visit to the United States and of the
kindly words he spoke of his American kinsmen, will
cause many to take a personal interest in the news of
his sudden death, deeper than that they would feel in
him simply gs clistinguished Englishman famous as
a preacher and writer.

every one it met; while in Holloway-road a dog, rabid
to all appearances, caused much apprehension of
dancer amongst crowds of pedestrians last Saturday
night. It is understood that the police notices to
muzzle dogs are not issued until the commencement
of statutory "dog-days," but the inhahitants of several
metropulitandistricts are about to ask the authorities
to adopt exceptional measures in view of the excep-
tionally hot weather.—Ereiting Standard.