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

DEATH OF DEAN STANLEY.

The Very Rev. Dean Stanley expired at the Deanery,
Westminster, on Monday night, at about a quarter to twelve
o clock—ln noticing his death, The Times 'of Tuesday
said :
We record this morning with great- regret the death
of the Dean of Westminster. On Saturday week the
Dean preached a sermon on the Beatitu ,es," hut was
obliged to retire twice during the service from
attacks of nausea. On Sunday (10th) his illness became
more pronounced, and though on Tuesday he was able
to viit the library, on the following city he wns pros-
trated by his malady, and from that time did not leave
his chamber. On Friday erysipelas of the face set in,
and during the next two days extended in an alarming
wanner, as intimated in a bulletin issued on Sunday
afternoon. The Dean of Llandaff, who had left town
to attend to the duties of his cathedral, was sum-
moned, but on his aarival the Dean was almost un-
conscious.-
On Monday morning the Dean enjoyed some hours
of sleep, and the bulletin issued at 9.30 a.m. recorded
that "there is now some increase of general power."
Later in the day, however, the symptoms became
much less favorable. At 9.30 p.m. the following WWI
the bulletin :—"The Dean has passed a quiet after-
noon, but his breathing has become embarassed."
From this time the strength of the patient rapidly
failed, and when Sir William Jenner arrived on
Monday night he pronounced that there was no hope.
The breathing became more and more irregular, and
the Dean expired at twenty minutes to twelve, seem-
ingly without pain.
For several months the intimate friends of the
Dean have noticed a certain failing of energy and
vital power, but no apprehensions were felt even when
his present indisposition began. The immediate cause
of his illness is said to have been a chill taken in the
course of the week before last, the first effects of
which were manifested on the occasion to which we
have referred.

The Dean, it was announced, "expired quietly
and without suffering." The Archbishop of Can-
terbmy was at his bedside during a portion of the
evening, and in the course et the day Canon
Farrar administered the Sacrament. he Dean
of Llandaff and Mrs. Vaughan, the sister of Dean
Stanley, were with him in his last moments.
During the day the inquiries at the Deanery were very
numerous. The Prince-of Wales, attended by Colonel
Teesdale, was among the callers, together with Mr.
and Mrs. Gladstone, Sir Stafford Northcote, and
many others.

The Daily News says :—The following details of
Dean Stanley's fatal illness will not be without interest
for our readers. We understand that it was brought
on by a chill which he caught on Thursday, July 7, at
the annual flowet show of the Society for Promoting
Window Gardening among the working classes in the
parishes of St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster,
which was held-in the College gardens, under the presi-
dency of Lord Shatesbury. He felt unwell on the fol-
lowing day; and on Saturday, after preaching a short
sermon in the Abbey, he cc mplained of sickness. His
health passed through various vicissitudes in the fol-
lowing week, but it appears that on Wednesday (13th)
he was well enough to receive company. Subsequently
erysipelas set in, and his constitution gradually suc-
cumbed to the attack.

In an Obituary notice the-Daily Telegraph says :
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, Doctor of Divinity
and Dean Of Westminster, was a scholar even more
than a Churchman. A popular preacher, posseesed, of
a singularly winning and persuasive eloquence, a
traveller, a historian, and a courtier, he was seen at
his best among his books in that stately apartment,
his library, in the Dean's House at Westminster.
Short of stature and .slight:of figure,- yet his presence
seemed to fill that place where he passed most
of his later years, surrounded on every hand by
the silent witnesses of dead and living genius,
his near and dear friends and companions. The
Dean's Houle is a- most appropriate dwelling for
one who was both Churchman and scholar. The
ancient hall, with its antique cabinets; the great
parlour with its old-world furniture, the walls hung
round with portraits of former holders of the office.
almost from time immemorial; the long, silent corridors,
softly carpeted, all breathe an air of quiet and repose
befitting the student and the priest. Not only the
walls of the library, but almost every available table
and chuir, were wont to be covered with books and
pamphlets, reviews and newspapers, countless evi-
dences of an insatiable appetite for learning and infor-
mation.
Dean Stanley was son of that Bishop of Norwich to
whose virtues he bears filial witness in an interesting
memoir published more than thirty years ago. . He
gave early promise of that ripe scholarship which has
been his distingui,hing characteristic throughout a
long and useful manhood. In 1837, being at that time
no more than twenty-two years of age, he to,,k a first
class in classics at Balliol College, Oxford, having
already carried off the -Newdegate Prize for. an
English poem on the subject of the gypsies. Steeped
to the lips in the social ethics of that incomparable
schoolmaster and perfect gentleman, Dr. Arnold, of
Rugby, under whom he had the great good fortune to
study as a youth, he came to Oxford filled with the
desire to make a name. The Ireland Scholarship, the
Latin Essay Prize, and- prizes for English and
theology showered upon him, and in his twenty-fifth
year he was elected a Fellow of University College.
Great as were these distinctions for so young a
man, it seemed it that time as if Arthur 13taniey
were to follow the course of many a recluse scholar
doomed to the . studious leisure and compel.-
fly° obscurity---of an ancient seat of learn-
ing. .. . . For twelve years Arthur Stanley
continued tutor of his college; nevertheless, in
after life he became a man of society, and, in a sense,
of the World. s His house was the centre of intellectual
life and unalloyed domestic happiness. He lived with
his wife; Lady Augusta Stanley, a woman of shining
talents and virtues, in perpetual love and amity, and,
when she died, grieved her loss in noble and pathetic
strains that touched the people's heart.
The list of his honours and employments is only
shorter than that of his books. Select preacher,
Secretary of the Oxford University Commission,
Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, Regius Professor of
Ecclesiastical History, Canon of Christ Church,
Oxford, Chaplain to the Bishop of London, and last
Dean of Westminster, his work would have sufficed
for many lives. The Abbey and: everything con-
nected with it became a passion with him. He
studied its antiquities, and dilated upon them
improved, renovated, restored, and beautified that
noble building to the best of his great ability.
Dean Stanley was jealous of the mighty fane and
of its reputation. On one occasion the writer of this
brief notice called on him, an. ambassador, to solicit a
burial-place for a popular English author, out og in the
flower of his manhood. The Dean was courteous, but
firm. The Abbey was only for the highest. None
other might enter there after death. About ten years
ago the University of St. Andrews conferred on him
the degree of LL. D. Subsequently he visited Cologne,
and took part in the Old Catholic "Congress, and later
still was elected to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrew's.
His powerful and sympathetic address delivered
on that occasion will be fresh in the public reed-
leetion. As a friend of the . Queen and an
instructor to the Prince of Wales—with the latter of
whom he made a tour of Palestine in 1862—he was
ever a welcome visitor at Court. An original thinker
in what before his time has been the bounded field of
orthodox theological speculation, so far as the Church
of England is concerned, he drew men of all creeds and
sect eto hear his sermons. It may be said of Dean
Stanley, and said without entering upon the vexed
question of dogma that he held broad church to be
infinitely better than no church at all,
-

bir.

A life of the revered Dr. Arnold was the first
literary work of any magnitude which came from the
pen of the then Mr. Stanley. Almost to the day of
his death he was, however, a constant contributor to
reviews and magasinea. . No kind of literary work
seemed too deep or too ephemeral for the employment
of the pen of this zeady writer, who enriched Dr.
Smith's Dictionaties of the Bible and of Classical
Biography with a number of most scholarly papers,
and wrote with equal facility and erudition for the
" Quarterly " and "Edinburgh" Reviews, and for
popular sheets published for tile ipstruction of less
eclectic readers. His volumes of sermons make a
small library in themselves He was equally
at home as a writer on history, philosophy, travel,
biography, and morals. "One touch of nature
makes the whole world kin," says the greatest of all
masters of English; and it was that same totieh of
nature which endeared Dean Stanley to all who knew
or heard or read him. During a long life of sturdy
endeavour, of labour, and of reward, and likewise of
_trial and loss, .he was sustained by the enthusiasm of
humanity. Gone, full of years and honours, to where
we would fain hope all creeds are merged in one, to
where only praise may follow him, he will be remern-
beted as an earneA and cultured teacher, sincerely
anxious to reconcile the Church with the world.

The following are extracts from an Obituary notice of the
Igo Doan in fl he Times :
'The Dean of Westminster is dead. Quomodo
ceeiderunt robusti et xelerunt arma These
words, which, as the Dean himself has told us, are
inscribed over the tomb of the Cid, will occur to
many as they reflect on the sudden and premature
removal of one who will be recognized by all.as
having been pre•eminenCy a strong fighter in a
noble cause. The Dean has passed from among
us after a brief illness, at the eomparatively
early ace of 66. Though his death will be um-
Nersally mourned, it is n.evertheleas almost a
matter few oongratulation..in the . case of such a
man, so vigorous in nature and in mind, that he
has died in the fulness of his powers, and after a
very brief period of suffering and weakness. To
no one could the decay of mental and physical vigour
which comes too often with advancing years have been
more painful trial than to a man of his tempera-
ment. •„I•Jokle,se,,than his father, who died even more
suddenly, though at a greater age, he might have said
of his life and its end that it is better to wear out than
to rust out. A life so full of activity and influende as
hie was, even though it had not leeched the tillotted