One of the greatest benefactors to his country and to the civilized world that it ever produced; now inhabiting an abode among the band of departed worthies who in this life were heroes and saints and bards of the better sort:-- _Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes_. The verses on Dean Stanley in July, 1881, are not quoted in his _Life_ by Lord Ernle, so I make no excuse for printing them here:-- With clear, calm eye he fronted Faith, and she, Despite the clamorous crowd, Smiled, knowing her soul-loyal votary At no slave's altar bowed. With forward glance beyond polemic scope He scanned the sweep of Time, And everywhere changed looks with blue-eyed Hope, Victress o'er doubt and crime. But inward turning, he, of gentle heart, And spirit mild as free, More gladly welcomed, as life's better part, The rule of Charity. _Punch's_ most generous acknowledgment of the genius of Charles Darwin was published in 1877:-- THREE ILLUSTRATIONS OF A THEORY Though dogmatists and dullards long opposed His Theory with venomous persistence, Darwin may now consider it has closed Its--"Struggle for existence." To calm research, not fierce polemic raid, Truth yields her secrets. After fair inspection The age twixt Science and her foes has made A--"Natural selection." Thou canst not, Zealotry, as blind as hot, Truth's champion slay, however hard thou hittest. Darwin outlives detraction. Is this not "Survival of the fittest"? When Darwin died in April, 1882, _Punch_ had entered on a phase in which the claims of science to solve the riddle of the universe excited his misgiving, and his obituary lines are of a non-committal order, save for one admirable couplet:-- Recorder of the long Descent of Man And a most living witness of his rise. There are no reserves in his valediction to Henry Fawcett in November, 1884:-- No braver conquest o'er ill fortune's flout Our age has seen than his who held straight on, Though the great God-gift from his days was gone, "And Wisdom at one entrance quite shut out"-- Held on with genial stoutness, seeing more Than men with sight undarkened, but with mind Through prejudice and Party bias blind. Another statesman of equal fearlessness and independence was W. E. Forster; but here the whole virtue of _Punch's_ salutation in April, 1886, is summed up in the two lines:-- A sturdy lover of a sturdy land, He served it, zeal at heart and life in hand.