He
had also become a widower. His gentle and delicate wife went to
revisit her native climate in the United States, but died there. On
his return thence to Europe, the consolations of a fraternal
friendship, in the bosoms of his noble countrymen, who had become
adopted denizens of free and happy England, vainly sought to retain
him with them. Sorrow in a breast of his temperament cannot find rest
in any place. His shining locks, once likened to those of Hyperion,
became frosted by an age of wandering as well as of sadness; and the
till then joyous and ever-tender heart of the sweetest poet of
Sclavonian birth breathed its last sigh in Paris, in the summer of
1841. It was on the first of June; and on the eighth of the month he
was buried with military honors and all the distinguishing rites of
the national church. The funeral service was performed by the
Archbishop of Chalcidonia, with a large body of the clergy attending.
A choir of fifty professors sung the mass, and more than a thousand
persons thronged the procession--persons of all nations, of all
creeds, religious or political, of every rank amongst men, of every
mind, from the prince to the peasant, that understood the true value
of genius when helmed by virtue, either on the land or on the wave;
whether in the field or in the cabinet; in the student's closet, or
in the duties of domestic home.
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