When the funeral cortege passed through Pall Mall and Trafalgar square on its way to Westminster Abbey, the streets for a mile and a half were packed with innumerable thousands.

The costermongers lifted a large banner on which were inscribed these words: "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me." The boys from the ragged schools lifted these words; "I was hungry and naked and ye fed me." All England felt the force of that colossal character.

To-day at that central point in Piccadilly where the highways meet and thronging multitudes go surging by, the English people have erected the statue of Shaftesbury--the fitting motto therefor; "The reforms of this century have been chiefly due to the presence and influence of Shaftesbury." If our generation is indeed held back from injustice and anarchy and bloodshed, it will be because Shaftesbury the peer, and Samuel, the seer, are duplicated in the lives of our great men, who stand forth to plead the cause of the poor and weak.
But man's atmosphere is equally potent to blight and to shrivel.

Not time, but man, is the great destroyer.

History is full of the ruins of cities and empires.