of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto Nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is sometimes mixture of

tion's lingering farewell; no response is made to the anxious gaze, as

"Unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square."

-Tennyson, "The Princess."

To the God-loving, to Virtue's votary who feels, as Shelley beautifully expresses it, the ecstatic and exultant throb when he sums up the thoughts and actions of well-spent days,

"There is no death; what seems so is transition.

This life of mortal-breath

Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call death."

-Longfellow.

"I thank God I never was afraid of hell. I have so fixed my contemplation on Heaven that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of one than endure the misery of the other. I fear God, yet am not afraid of Him; His mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His judgments afraid thereof. I can hardly think there was ever any scared into Heaven; they go the fairest way to Heaven that would serve God without hell."— Religio Medici. LII.

The essay points to the surroundings of death as giving it an artificial terror, and as more dreadful to confront than death itself; hence we find Rochefoucauld saying, "Let us hope more from our constitutions than from those feeble reasonings which would make us believe that we can approach death with indifference." Byron, who was evidently an admirer, and to some extent a disciple, of the French philosopher, writes to Moore that "a death-bed is a matter of nerves and constitution, and not of religion;" and in "Mazeppa " he gives the thought poetic form::

"Save the future, which is viewed
Not quite as men are bad or good,
But as their nerves may be endued."

"The preservation of life," says Addison, "should be only a

vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb: for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher, and natural man, it was well said, “Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa."* Groans and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death; and therefore death is no such terrible enemy when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupateth it: nay, we read, after Otho the emperor had slain himself, pity (which is the tenderest of affections) provoked many to die out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness and satiety: Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; mori velle, non tantum fortis, aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest." † A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and

secondary concern, and the direction of it our principal. If we have this frame of mind, we shall take the best means to preserve life, without being over-solicitous about the event, and shall arrive at the point of felicity which Martial has mentioned as the perfection of happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing for death.". Spectator.

*"The surroundings of a death-bed strike more terror than death itself." - Seneca.

† "Consider how often you do the same things. A man may be willing to die, not because he is brave or miserable, but simply because he is tired of living."

*

over. It is no less worthy to observe, how little alteration in good spirits the approaches of death make: for they appear to be the same men till the last instant. Augustus Cæsar died in a compliment; "Livia, conjugii nostri memor, vive et vale." † Tiberius in dissimulation, as Tacitus saith of him, "Jam Tiberium vires et corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant:"‡ Vespasian in a jest, sitting upon the stool, "Ut puto Deus fio:"§ Galba with a sentence, “Feri, si ex re sit populi Romani," || holding forth his neck: Septimus Severus in despatch: "Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum" and the like. Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made it appear more fearful. Better, saith he, "qui finem vitæ extremum inter munera ponit naturæ.”** It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the.other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolours of death;

"When all the blandishments of life are gone,

The coward sneaks to death, the brave live on."

-Dr. Jno. Sewell, from Martial.

"It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but when life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live."- Religio Medici.

↑ "Livia, mindful of our union, live on, and farewell;" i. e. I dwell in my last moments on our harmonious married life, and wish you a long life, and bid you an affectionate good bye.

"Cæsar Augustus died in a compliment.' 'I hope it was a sincere one,' said my Uncle Toby. ""Twas to his wife,' replied my father."- Tristram Shandy. V. 4.

"His strength and vitality were now leaving Tiberius, but not his duplicity."

§ "I am becoming a god, I suspect," said he, in a rebuking sneer to his flatterers.

|| "Strike, if it is for the good of the Roman people."

"Hurry, if anything remains for me to do."

**"Who looks upon death as one of nature's blessings."

but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is "Nunc dimittis "when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy: “Extinctus amabitur idem." †

OF REVENGE.

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out: for as for the first wrong, it doth but offend the law, but the revenge of that wrong putteth the law out of office. Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon and Solomon, I am sure, saith, "It is the glory

*"Now, dismiss us," or "me."

"The same man will be loved, though dead.”

One of the fathers saith "that there is but this difference between the death of old men and young men: that old men go to death, and death comes to young men.". - Bacon's Apothegms. "The use of the law," says Bacon, in his treatise on that subject, "consisteth principally in these three things: 1. To secure men's persons from death and violence. 2. To dispose the prop

erty of their goods and lands. 3. For preservation of their good names from shame and infamy." Until law was enacted and enforced, there was no settled society or established government. Each man was a law unto himself, and according to his ability secured for himself the benefits which society and government secure for us. The law protects a right or redresses a wrong; but before there was law, a man redressed his wrong by inflicting an equal or greater injury upon one who wronged him. In society and under government this kind of setting things to rights, this individual assumption of the authority of government, is very forcibly credited with an offense greater than law-breaking, ¿. e. putting the law out of office, which if practiced unchecked in any society would result in anarchy and reduce that society back to a state of nature.

of a man to pass by an offense." That which is past is gone and irrecoverable, and wise men have enough to do with things present and to come; therefore they do but trifle with themselves, that labour in past matters. There is no man doth a wrong for the wrong's sake, but thereby to purchase himself profit, or pleasure, or honour, or the like; therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong, merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or briar, which prick and scratch, because they can do no other. The most tolerable sort of revenge is for those wrongs which there is no law to remedy; but then, let a man take heed the revenge be such as there is no law to punish, else a man's enemy is still beforehand, and it is two for one. Some, when they take revenge, are desirous the party should know whence it cometh: this is the more generous; for the delight seemeth to be not so much in doing the hurt as in making the party repent: but base and crafty cowards are like the arrow that flieth in the dark. Cosmus, * Duke of Florence, had a desperate saying against perfidious or neglecting friends, as if those wrongs were unpardonable. "You shall read," saith he, "that we are commanded to forgive our enemies, but you never read that we are commanded to forgive our friends." But yet the spirit of Job was in a better tune: "Shall we," saith he, "take good at God's hands, and not be content to take evil also?" and so of friends in a proportion. This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal

* Cosmo de Medici, patron of art and literature at Florence, head of the Florentine Republic, A. D., 1389–1464. Sidney Smith takes a wiser and more charitable stand towards neglecting friends when he says: "True, it is most painful not to meet the kindness and affection you feel you have deserved and have a right to expect from others; but it is a mistake to complain of it, for it is of no use; you cannot extort friendship with a cocked pistol."— Memoirs.