George Eliot
The inscription on the granite obelisk which forms George Eliot’s gravestone, besides recording her pseudonym and real name, with the dates of birth and death, bears the first lines of her poem, commencing:
Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.
At Avignon, France, is the marble sarcophagus of John Stuart Mill and his wife, on the top of which is the following eulogy:
Harriet Mill,
The deeply regretted, and dearly beloved wife of John Stuart Mill
Her great and loving heart, her noble soul, her clear, powerful, original intellect, made her the guide and support, the instructor in wisdom, and example in goodness, as she was the delight of those who had the happiness to belong to her. As earnest for the public good as she was generous, and devoted to all who surrounded her, her influence has been felt in many of the greatest improvements of the age; and will be in those still to come. Were there even a few hearts and intellects like hers, this earth would soon become the hoped-for heaven.