Could not content, nor quench their appetites.
Life is a frost of cold felicities;
And death the thaw of all our vanities.

True, true--who knows it not, who has lived fifty years in such a world
as this?--and yet but half the truth.

Were there no after-life, no juster home beyond the grave, where each
good deed--so spake the most august of lips--shall in no wise lose its
reward--is it nought, _virum volitare per ora_, to live upon the lips of
men, and find an immortality, even for a few centuries, in their hearts?
I know what answer healthy souls have made in every age to that question;
and what they will make to the end, as long as the respect of their
fellow-creatures is, as our Creator meant that it should be, precious to
virtuous men. And let none talk of 'the play-game of a painted stone,'
of 'the worthless honours of a bust.' The worth of honour lies in that
same worthlessness. Fair money wage for fair work done, no wise man will
despise. But that is pay, not honour; the very preciousness
whereof--like the old victor's parsley crown in the Greek games--is that
it had no value, gave no pleasure, save that which is imperishable,
spiritual, and not to be represented by gold nor quintessential diamond.

Therefore, to me at least, the Abbey speaks, not of vanity and
disappointment, but of content and peace.

The quiet now and silent sprites

of whom old Christolero sings, they are content; and well for them that
they should be. They have received their nation's thanks, and ask no
more, save to lie there in peace. They have had justice done them; and
more than one is there, who had scant justice done him while alive. Even
Castlereagh is there, in spite of Byron's and of Shelley's scorn. It may
be that they too have found out ere now, that there he ought to be. The
nation has been just to him who, in such wild times as the world had not
seen for full three hundred years, did his duty according to his light,
and died in doing it; and his sad noble face looks down on Englishmen as
they go by, not with reproach, but rather with content.

Content, I say, and peace. Peace from their toil, and peace with their
fellow-men. They are at least at rest. _Obdormierunt in pace_. They
have fallen asleep in peace. The galled shoulder is freed from the
collar at last. The brave old horse has done his stage and lain down in
the inn. There are no more mistakes now, no more sores, no more falls;
and