Page:Collingwood - Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll.djvu/373

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
LEWIS CARROLL
349

After the grave had been filled up, the wreaths which had covered the coffin were placed upon it. Many were from "child-friends" and bore such inscriptions as "From two of his child-friends"—"To the sweetest soul that ever looked with human eyes," &c. Then the mourners left him alone there—up on the pleasant downs where he had so often walked.

A marble cross, under the shadow of a pine, marks the spot, and beneath his own name they have engraved the name of "Lewis Carroll," that the children who pass by may remember their friend, who is now—himself a child in all that makes childhood most attractive—in that "Wonderland" which outstrips all our dreams and hopes.

I cannot forbear quoting from Professor Sanday's sermon at Christ Church on the Sunday after his death:—

The world will think of Lewis Carroll as one who opened out a new vein in literature, a new and a delightful vein, which added at once mirth and refinement to life. . . . May we not say that from our courts at Christ Church there has flowed into the literature of our time a rill, bright and sparkling, health-giving and purifying, wherever its waters extend?

On the following Sunday Dean Paget, in the