_Decline and Fall_? He
describes the tumult of emotion with which, after twenty years of
closest application, he wrote the last line of the last chapter of the
last volume of his masterpiece. It was a glorious summer's night at
Lausanne. 'After laying down my pen,' he says, 'I took several turns in
a covered walk of acacias which commands a prospect of the country, the
lake and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the
silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was
silent.' It was the greatest moment of his life. We recall, too, the
similar experience of Sir Archibald Alison. 'As I approached the closing
sentence of my _History of the Empire_,' he says, 'I went up to Mrs.
Alison to call her down to witness the conclusion, and she saw the last
words of the work written, and signed her name on the margin. It would
be affectation to conceal the deep emotion that I felt at this event.'
Or think of the last hours of Venerable Bede. Living away back in the
early dawn of our English story--twelve centuries ago--the old man had
set himself to translate the Gospel of John into our native speech.
Cuthbert, one of his young disciples, has bequeathed to us the touching
record. As the work approached completion, he says, death drew on apace.
The aged scholar was racked with pain; sleep forsook him; he could
scarcely breathe. The young man who wrote at his dictation implored him
to desist. But he would not rest. They came at length to the final
chapter; could he possibly live till it was done?

'And now, dear master,' exclaimed the young scribe tremblingly, 'only
one sentence remains!' He read the words and the sinking man feebly
recited the English equivalents.

'It is finished, dear master!' cried the youth excitedly.

'Ay, _it is finished_!' echoed the dying saint; 'lift me up, place me at
that window of my cell at which I have so often prayed to God. Now glory
be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost!' And, with these
triumphant words, the beautiful spirit passed to its rest and its
reward.

V

In his own narrative of his conversion, Hudson Taylor quotes James
Proctor's well-known hymn--the hymn that, in one of his essays, Froude
criticizes so severely:

Nothing either great or small,
Nothing, sinner, no;
Jesus did it, did it all,
Long, long ago.

'_It is Finished!_' yes, indeed,
Finished every jot;
Sinner, this is all you need;
Tel