"
"'Tis well, 'tis something, we may stand
Where he in English earth is laid."
His burial-place is on a hill overhanging the Bristol Channel, a spot
selected by his father as a fit resting-place for his beloved boy.
And so
"They laid him by the pleasant shore,
And in the hearing of the wave."
Dying at twenty-two, the hope and pride of all who knew him, "remarkable
for the early splendor of his genius," the career of this young man
concentres the interest of more than his native country. Tennyson has
laid upon his early grave a poem which will never let his ashes be
forgotten, or his memory fade like that of common clay. What Southey so
felicitously says of Kirke White applies most eloquently to young
Hallam:--"Just at that age when the painter would have wished to fix his
likeness and the lover of poetry would delight to contemplate him, in
the fair morning of his virtues, the full spring-blossom of his hopes,--
just at that age hath death set the seal of eternity upon him, and the
beautiful hath been made permanent."
Arthur Henry Hallam was born in Bedford Place, London, on the 1st of
February, 1811. The eldest son of Henry Hallam, the eminent historian
and critic, his earliest years had every advantage which culture and
moral excellence could bring to his education.
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