Many testified to his great benevolence. The German Athenæum wrote: “If the world of science has lost in your late husband one of its brightest stars, the poor, the striving student, as well as the struggling artist, have lost a liberal benefactor and a patron; and on hearing of his sad and but too early death, many will have exclaimed, ‘We ne’er shall look upon his like again!’” An eminent man spoke of him as one “whose life has been spent in an unselfish and unceasing devotion to God’s creatures.” Many of the letters which I have read convey the thoughts of some of his friends on hearing of his death, in language such as this: “We all felt struck down; realising how much poorer his loss had left the world, leaving us as he did when full of the vigor of his endless interests, and brightening all around him, not only by his genius and high intellect, but by his marvellous benevolence and tender consideration, so full was he of kind feeling and thought for others. He was in a high degree the possessor of those sweet domestic virtues which, while so simple and unostentatious, were so spontaneous and charming. What an eminently well-rounded life was his! Our children will always remember how he was held up to them as a man almost without an equal.” A confidential servant, who had lived in his family many years, wrote of him as the most Christ-like man she had ever met; and that he always reminded her of the Arab prince who asked the recording angel, when writing in his book the names of those who loved the Lord, to write him as one who loved his fellowmen; the angel wrote and carried the book to heaven, bringing it back again to show; and when the prince looked, lo, his name led all the rest! Of his family relations, the Rev. Mr. Haweis thus wrote, in a sermon on “Friends!” “What a beautiful sight, too, was the friendship of the late Sir William Siemens for his brothers, and theirs for him! not less beautiful because lived out unconsciously in the full glare and publicity of the commercial world, into which questions of amity are not supposed to enter, especially when they interfere with business. But here were several brothers, each with his large firm, his inventions, his speculations, yet each at the other’s disposal; never eager to claim his own, never a rival! These men were often separated by time and space, but they were one in heart.”