Life
He was the third son of Major Thomas Bartholomew Price Hardy, from naval family, and older brother of William Hardy who had a parallel career as archivist. Born at Port Royal in Jamaica, he crossed over to England and in 1819 entered the Record Office in the Tower of London. Trained under Henry Petrie (1768–1842) he gained a knowledge of palaeography, and began to edit selections of the public records.
From 1861 until his death he was deputy-keeper of the Public Record Office, which just before his appointment had moved to its new London headquarters in Chancery Lane. Hardy, who was knighted in 1873, was important in setting up the Historical Manuscripts Commission in 1869.
Read more about this topic: Thomas Duffus Hardy
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one’s life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“The spring is here, young and beautiful as ever, and absolutely shocking in its display of reckless maternity; but the Judas tree will bloom for you on the Bosphorus if you get there in time. No one ever loved the dog-wood and Judas tree as I have done, and it is my one crown of life to be sure that I am going to take them with me to heaven to enjoy real happiness with the Virgin and them.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)