"
Still more, perhaps, did Sir Roderick touch the heart of the audience
when he said of Livingstone "that notwithstanding eighteen months of
laudation, so justly bestowed on him by all classes of his countrymen,
and after receiving all the honors which the Universities and cities of
our country could shower upon him, he is still the same honest,
true-hearted David Livingstone as when he issued from the wilds of
Africa." It was natural for the Duke of Argyll to recall the fact that
Livingstone's family was an Argyllshire one, and it was a happy thought
that as Ulva was close to Iona--"that illustrious island," as Dr. Samuel
Johnson called it, "whence roving tribes and rude barbarians derived the
benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion,"--so might the son
of Ulva carry the same blessings to Africa, and be remembered, perhaps,
by millions of the human race as the first pioneer of civilization, and
the first harbinger of the gospel. It was graceful in the Bishop of
Oxford (Samuel Wilberforce) to advert to the debt of unparalleled
magnitude which England, founder of the accursed slave-trade, owed to
Africa, and to urge the immediate prosecution of Livingstone's plans,
inasmuch as the spots in Africa, where the so-called Christian trader
had come, were marked, more than any other, by crime and distrust, and
insecurity of life and property.
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