CHARLES
WARNER
95
distinguished through many generations, not the least in their then living chief and representative, Charles "Warner, who in the highest ministerial offices had steered Trinidad through the trying times which followed the abolition of slavery. I had myself in early life been brought into rela足 tions with other members of his family. He himself was a very old man on the edge of the grave; but hearing that I was in Port of Spain, he had expressed a wish to see me. I found him in his drawing room, shrunk in stature, pale, bent double by weight of years, and but feebly able to lift his head to speak. I thought, and I judged rightly, that he could have but a few weeks, perhaps but a few days, to live. There is something peculiarly solemn in being brought to speak with a supremely eminent man, who is already struggling with the moment which is to launch him into a new existence. He raised himself in his chair. He gave me his withered hand. His eyes still gleamed with the light of an untouched intelligence. All else of him seemed dead. The soul, untouched by the decay of the frame which had been its earthly tenement, burnt bright as ever on the edge of its release. W h e n words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain, And they breathe t r u t h who breathe their words in pain.
He roused himself to talk, and he talked sadly, for all things at home and everywhere were travelling on the road which he well knew could lead to no good end. No states足 man had done better practical work than he, or work which had Rome better fruit, could it be allowed to ripen. But for him Trinidad would have been a wilderness, savage as when Columbus found the Caribs there. He belonged to the race who make empires, as the orators lose them, who do things and do not talk about them, who build and do not cast down, who reverence ancient habits and institutions as the organic functions of corporate national character; a Tory of the Tories, who nevertheless recognised that