ring of his heart; its pervading
essence was that which he expressed in one of his Melodies,--

"Shall I ask the brave soldier who fights by my side,
In the cause of mankind, if our creeds agree?
Shall I give up the friend I have valued and tried,
If he kneel not before the same altar with me?"

His children were all baptized and educated members of the Church of
England. He attended the parish church, and according to the ritual of
the Church of England he was buried.

It was not any outward change of religion, but homage to a purer and
holier faith, that induced him to have his children baptized and brought
up as members of the English Church. "For myself," he says, "my having
married a Protestant wife gave me opportunity of choosing a religion, at
least for my children; and if my marriage had no other advantage, I
should think this quite sufficient to be grateful for."

Moore was the eloquent advocate of his country, when it was oppressed,
goaded, and socially enthralled; but when time and enlightened policy
removed all distinctions between the Irishman and the Englishman,
between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic, his muse was silent,
because content; nay, he protested in impressive verse against a
continued agitation that retarded her progress, when her claims were
admitted, her rights acknowledged, and her wrongs redressed.

Reference to the genius of Moore is needless. My object in this "Memory"
is to offer homage to his moral and social worth. The world that obtains
intense delight from his poems, and willingly acknowledges its debt to
the poet, has been less ready to estimate the high and estimable
character, the loving and faithful nature of the man. There are,
however, many--may this humble tribute augment the number!--by whom the
memory of Thomas Moore is cherished in the heart of hearts; to whom the
cottage at Sloperton will be a shrine while they live,--that grave
beside the village church a monument better loved than that of any other
of the men of genius by whom the world is delighted, enlightened, and
refined.

"That God is love," writes his friend and biographer, Earl Russell, "was
the summary of his belief; that a man should love his neighbor as
himself seems to have been the rule of his life." The Earl of Carlisle,
inaugurating the statue of the poet,[O] bore testimony to his moral and
social worth "in all the holy relations of life,--as son, as brother, as
husband, as