DATE OBOLUM BELISARIO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 744, 3 April 1866, Page 4

DATE OBOLUM BELISARIO.

" Give a half-penny to Belisariua." Tins sentence was,the ..shame of-the most luxurious type of civilization that was ever known. A veteran, and benefactor sat in the gates of the second Empire, and begged his bread of passers-by. The fact is even quoted as a reproach against Belisarius, for if he had gone into aa out-building and perished refusing all aid, and spurning advice, he would have died a martyr, and would have saved the state the defamatory episode which has acccompanied his name down to these times. It is stated by a jury of twelve persons on their oaths, that a poor old man ofuearly eighty years has died in a shed for; want of the common necessaries of life. It appears that the poor old fcilow had been exhorted to apply to the Provincial Hospital, where according to ,the Coroner he would have been at once received. He had only ,a week or two before his death Walked, from the Eaipara, where he had found an asylum in the establishment of a well-known benevolent gentleman. Old age, like childhood, is wayward and wilful, but the deceased man preserved his integrity and hid honour under the pressure of dire misfortune. It is more probable from the observation of a medical gentleman, that the cause of death was diarrhoea in a subject so infirm, causing exhaustion. At all event;; the poor old man closed his eyes, and the soul leaped out, leaving the light of it's v-ecent presence upon his dead face. " I hare never," said the Sergeant-Major of Police, " known the deceased to be in the lock-up. I believe the old man would starve rather than begand so ho did. H'-re, then, we are in this Colonial town, in the presence of a result of civilization which is common enough in English cities, where the solitary wretch covers himself in his rug, steals into a corner, and dies sooner than let liis real state be known. "Do not," said this great old pauper, to the Samaritan who brought him a pannikin of tea, " make my condition known to the police,.l will be better soon,' and so he turned over and died.

How many men in. this Colonial city colli(1 have endured and died like Jolin "Frost. Are there a dozen; is there one P Here is an opening for practical benevolence. If tlie orphan is our special care—and the orphan has youth, and hope and enterprise all in prospect—ciay not the most gentle hand close the eye's of the weary, and brace up the tottering form of four score years. We hope and trust that something will be done towards procuring an asylum for the aged and infirm. Let every charitable expedient be resorted to in aid. The death of a man from want in the centre of enormous wealth may be attributable, as in this case, to the wilfulness of old ago, but the person who saw hiin in articulu mortis ought to have been in position to say " let him b& taken- and I will h'c'in" to the traveller's rest, where his weariness may pass away and his heart be at peace.