The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prbvalebit THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1884. The Year’s Obituary.
The year 1882 will long be remembered as one in which there died a greater number of notable persons than in any similar period for a very long time. The death roll of the past twelve months is fortunately neither so numerous, nor does it show so many names of supreme importance, but as no record of the year can be complete which does not include a notice of celebrated men who have left this earth our readers will perhaps consider a short obituary to be not without interest. In Great Britain the list is a comparatively light one, albeit the country has to mourn more than one representative of learning, literature, and science. At the beginning of the year, Baron Martin, a judge who was held in high repute, died at the advanced age of eighty-two, and in March the Bench lost a still greater luminary in the decease of Sir George Jessel, Master of the Rolls. The latter was recognised as one of the clearest headed lawyers of his day, and he held the unique position of being the first Jew ever elevated to the judicial Bench. Probably the greatest name on England’s literary death roll of the past year is that of John Richard Green, the historian, who died at the early age of forty-five. It is not too much to say that Mr Green entirely revolutionised the system of teaching history, and had he lived to fulfil the promise of his early life his name would have been handed down in the same category as those of Macaulay and Hume. Another notable figure in literature passed away in the person of Dr William Chambers, the bead of a publishing firm which has done much to popularise knowledge, and his name has been a household word in many lands where the Journal is widely circulated and the Encyclopedia that the Chambers’s issued some few years ago is to be found everywhere, To the majority of English people the Russian novelist Tourgueneff is unknown, but many capable critics hold him to be one of the greatest genuises of the century, and there can be no doubt that his works have had a tremendous influence in his native country. He died in Paris in September, having principally lived in that city since his banishment from Russia many years ago on account of his liberal political views. Science in England has lost a celebrated mathematician in the President of the Royal Society, Mr William Spoxtiswoode, and the most famous electric engineer and inventor of the day in Sir C. W. Siemens. Bishop Colenso, whose unorthodox views in regard to the Old Testament, raised such a stir in the religious world some years ago, has also joined the majority. In art the only notable death we can call to mind is that of Gustave Dore, a popular painter who will be best known to posterity as a book illustrator, but whose more ambituous work was produced to satisfy a vulgar rather than a critical taste.
Whatever may be the opinion of the so-called music of the future, there can be no doubt that Richard Wagner, who died at Venice on February 13th, was one of the greatest musicians the world ever saw. It has fallen to the lot of few men to be honored in his ifetime as Wagner was, and if it is better to be idolised by the few than to be simply admired by the many, his career was unquestionably a success. Of all the names on the year’s death-roll, that of the German maestro will probably live longest. Among military celebrities, we find recorded the demise of General Chanzy, who distinguished himself in the Franco-Prussian war, and of General Williams, the hero of the defence of Kars, one of the best remembered incidents in the Crimean war. We have, we think, included every person of note in our list, and it will be seen that we have reason to be thankful that death has not been so busy with the eminent men of the world during the past year as was the case in 1882,
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Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1040, 3 January 1884, Page 2
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703The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prbvalebit THURSDAY, JANUARY 3, 1884. The Year’s Obituary. Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1040, 3 January 1884, Page 2
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