The Last Words Of Distinguished Men And Women Part 19

LEO X. (Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, elected Pope March 11, 1513), 1475-1521. "_I have been murdered; no remedy can prevent my speedy death._" It is believed that he was poisoned.

The circ.u.mstances attending the death of the pontiff are involved in mysterious and total obscurity, and the accounts given of this event by Varillas and similar writers in subsequent times, are the spurious offspring of their own imagination.

_Roscoe "Life of Leo the Tenth."_

Leo X. expired upon the 1st day of December, 1521. The vacillating game he played in European politics had just been crowned with momentary success. Some folk believed that the Pope died of joy after hearing that his Imperial allies had entered the town of Milan; others thought that he succ.u.mbed to poison. We do not know what caused his death. But the unsoundness of his const.i.tution, overtaxed by dissipation and generous living, in the midst of public cares for which the man had hardly nerve enough, may suffice to account for a decease certainly sudden and premature.

_Symond: "Life of Michelangelo Buonarotti."_

LIEBER (Francis, German author, political refugee, and, later, Professor of History and Political Science in Columbia College, New York), 1800-1872.

On the afternoon of the 2nd of October, 1872, he was sitting quietly, listening to his wife, who was reading aloud to him as was her custom, when he gave one cry and immediately died.[27]

_Perry's "Life and Letters of Lieber."_

[27] It has been thought that Lieber's death was occasioned by rupture of the heart. See the last words of Charles Sumner and the foot note on his sudden death. See also the last words of John Palmer and the account of his death appended from the Annual Register.

LINDSEY (Theophilus, English Unitarian clergyman), 1723-1808. "_No, whatever is, is best_,"--said to a friend who suggested that his fort.i.tude sprang from his recollection of the maxim, "Whatever is, is right."

LIGNE (Charles Joseph, Prince de, "The Friend of Kings," author of "Commentaries on the Art of War." He was a brave and good soldier, but a great beau and dandy), 1734-1814. "_Back, thou accursed phantom!_" As he felt the approach of death he sprang from a rec.u.mbent to a sitting posture, and ordered the door to be closed; but finding that he could not prevent the last great enemy from entering, he gave the phantom battle; and in the midst of the conflict he threw up his arms and cried, "Back thou accursed phantom!" In a moment he was dead.

At seventy-two he was still a fop and still a gallant. "His delicately malicious and gayly ironic wit," wrote Count Ouvaroff, who knew him only in old age, "was allied with a sweetness of character and an equality of temper that were unparalleled." "Gravity only was distasteful to him, and he would always turn the conversation with a word or a nod from too serious a topic. His pride was flattered by the eagerness wherewith the curious pointed their finger at him in the street, and he was yet anxious to attract the attention which was his due. He would walk abroad in the Field Marshal's cloak, which became his youthful figure, or, still more splendid, he would drive in his gray coach, whose white horses were the wonder of all Vienna. His happiness had suffered no eclipse; his talk was as marvelous as when he astonished the Court of Versailles, and not even his wrinkles obscured the dazzle of his smile.

The best of life had been his, and he waited the end in placid content, and it is in his triumph in Vienna, rather than in his c.u.mbrous books, that you catch the last glimpse of the Prince de Ligne."

_Charles Whibley: "The Pageantry of Life."_

LIPPARD (George, American author), 1822-1854. "_Is this death?_" to his physician.

Lippard wrote a number of sensational novels, and a book on "Was.h.i.+ngton and his Generals." He was the founder of the once strong and useful Brotherhood of the Union, a secret charitable inst.i.tution.

LISLE (Sir George, English royalist officer, taken prisoner at Colchester, where he was put to death August 29th, 1648),--1648. "_I have been nearer to you when you have missed me_," said to a soldier of the squad appointed to shoot him, and who had, to Sir George Lisle's request that he would not miss or merely wound him, replied, "I'll warrant, sir, we will hit you." Lisle thought the distance between himself and the firing party was too great and he wished the soldiers to come nearer to him.

Fairfax sullied his victory by an act of great cruelty. In a council of war, it was resolved that Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, and Sir Bernard Gascoign, the governors of Colchester, should be put to death: but the life of Gascoign was spared, on account of his being a foreigner. When the other two were brought out to be shot, Lucas gave the word to fire, as if he had been at the head of his own company.

Lisle kissed him eagerly after he was dead; and desired the executioners to come nearer.--_The Percy Anecdotes._

LIVINGSTONE (David, distinguished missionary, traveler and discoverer), 1813-1873. His last words, which are not recorded, were about Chilanebo's village, in Ilala, and the neighboring country, and especially about the Luapula. His mind wandered, and the questions were often disconnected and indistinct, but his last thoughts were of Africa.

His attendants constructed for him a rude hut, and when it was completed they took him into it and laid him upon a rough bed--the best they could procure. He spoke only once or twice during the night. Next day he lay undisturbed. He asked a few wandering questions about the country--especially about the Luapula. His people knew that the end could not be far off. Nothing occurred to attract notice during the early part of the night, but at four in the morning, the boy who lay at his door called in alarm for Susi, fearing that their master was dead.

By the candle still burning they saw him, not in bed, but kneeling at the bedside with his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. The sad yet not unexpected truth soon became evident: he had pa.s.sed away on the furthest of all his journeys, and without a single attendant. But he had died in the act of prayer--prayer offered in that reverential att.i.tude about which he was always so particular; commending his own spirit, with all his dear ones, as was his wont, into the hands of his Saviour; and commending AFRICA--his own dear Africa--with all her woes and sins and wrongs, to the Avenger of the oppressed and the Redeemer of the lost.

So soon as the death of Livingstone was known to his men, they resolved to carry their master's remains to Zanzibar. Arrangements were made for drying and embalming the body, after removing the heart and other viscera. For fourteen days the body was dried in the sun. After being wrapped in calico, and the legs bent inward at the knees, it was enclosed in a large piece of bark from a Myonga tree in the form of a cylinder; over this a piece of sail-cloth was sewed; and the package was lashed to a pole, so as to be carried by two men. Jacob Wainwright carved an inscription on the Moula tree under which the body had rested, and where the heart was buried, and Chitambo was charged to keep the gra.s.s cleared away, and to protect two posts and a cross-piece which they erected to mark the spot.

The remains were brought to Aden on board the "Calcutta," and thereafter transferred to the steamer "Malwa," which arrived at Southampton on the 15th of April. Mr. Thomas Livingstone, eldest surviving son of the Doctor, being then in Egypt on account of his health, had gone on board at Alexandria. The body was conveyed to London by special train and deposited in the rooms of the Geographical Society in Saville Row.

In the course of the evening the remains were examined by Sir William Fergusson and several other medical gentlemen, including Dr. Loudon, of Hamilton, whose professional skill and great kindness to his family had gained for him a high place in the esteem and love of Livingstone. To many persons it had appeared so incredible that the remains should have been brought from the heart of Africa to London, that some conclusive identification of the body seemed to be necessary to set all doubt at rest. The state of the arm, the one that had been broken by the lion, supplied the crucial evidence. "Exactly in the region of the attachment of the deltoid to the humerus" (wrote Sir William Fergusson in a contribution to the _Lancet_, April 18, 1874), "there were the indications of an oblique fracture. On moving the arm there were the indications of an ununited fracture. A closer identification and dissection displayed the false joint that had so long ago been so well recognized by those who had examined the arm in former days.... The first glance set my mind at rest, and that, with further examination, made me as positive as to the identification of these remains as that there has been among us in modern times one of the greatest men of the human race--David Livingstone."

The black slab that now marks the resting-place of Livingstone in Westminster Abbey bears this inscription:

BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS OVER LAND AND SEA, HERE RESTS DAVID LIVINGSTONE, MISSIONARY, TRAVELER, PHILANTHROPIST, BORN MARCH 19, 1813, AT BLANTYRE, LANARKs.h.i.+RE.

DIED MAY 4,[28] 1873, AT CHITAMBO'S VILLAGE, ILALA.

For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and abolish the desolating slave-trade of Central Africa, and where, with his last words he wrote: "All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one--American, English, Turk--who will help to heal this open sore of the world."

Along the right border of the stone are the words:

TANTUS AMOR VERI, NIHIL EST QUOD NOSCERE MALIM QUAM FLUVII CAUSAS PER SaeCULA TANTA LATENTES.

And along the left border:

OTHER SHEEP I HAVE WHICH ARE NOT OF THIS FOLD, THEM ALSO I MUST BRING, AND THEY SHALL HEAR MY VOICE.

_Blaikie's "Personal Life of Livingstone."_

The late E. J. Glane, who crossed Africa in the interest of _The Century_, makes the following entry in his journal:

July 9. To-day I revisited the tree where Livingstone died, and in order to guide others to the exact spot, in case this tree should disappear from any cause, I selected another big tree likely to last many years, cleared away two and a half square feet of its bark, and in the s.p.a.ce marked as follows: "This tree is magnetic southwest of the tree where Livingstone's remains are buried, and is forty-five paces from it." I brought away a bit of the bark of the memorable tree--a dead part, so as not to be guilty of vandalism.[29]

Livingstone's grave is in a quiet nook, such as he himself desired, in the outskirts of a forest bordering on a gra.s.s plain where the roan buck and eland roam in safety. When I visited the place turtle-doves were cooing in the tree-tops, and a litter of young hyenas had been playing near by; in the low ground outside the hole leading to the cave were their recent tracks; they had scampered into safety at our approach.

[28] In the _Last Journals_ the date is May 1st; on the stone, May 4th. The attendants could not quite determine the day.

[29] The section of the tree containing the inscription made by Jacob Wainwright has been brought to England and deposited in the house of the Geographical Society.

LOCKE (John, author of the celebrated "Essay Concerning the Human Understanding"), 1632-1704. "_O, the depth of the riches of the goodness and knowledge of G.o.d!_"

Some authorities say his last words were, "Cease now;" to Lady Masham who was reading to him a Psalm of David.

LONGFELLOW (Henry Wadsworth), 1807-1882. "_Now I know that I must be very ill, since you have been sent for_," said to his sister who came from Portland, Me.

His last written lines (nine days before his death) were:

"Out of the shadows of night, The world rolls into light; It is daybreak everywhere."

--_The Bells of San Blas._

LOUIS I. (Louis le Debonnaire), 778-840. "_Huz! huz!_"

He turned his face to the wall and twice cried, "Huz! huz!" ("Out!

out!") and then died.

_Bouquet._

LOUIS IX. ("Saint Louis," canonized by Pope Boniface VIII. in 1297), 1215-1270. "_I will enter now into the house of the Lord._"