hood, sinking into sickness, languor, and death, it is delightful to behold men like Albani, venerable in age, of a noble, grave, yet cheerful and majestic aspect, insensible to decay:

"Adown whose neck the reverend locks

In comely curls do wave,

And in whose aged temples grow

The blossoms of the grave."

How exquisitely delightful to the imagination is the hope, the internal assurance, that we can never actually die! In this hope and in this assurance let us live and be happy. We are dust, it is true; but the body only is dust; the soul is of a superior nature !

Musing on the dead is sometimes as agreeable to our feelings as musical sounds heard of a night between sleeping and waking, or the mild murmurs of the water, of a calm summer's evening, while we are sitting near the edge of a precipice jutting over the seashore. There is a slight sensation of pain in all the three; and a strong sensation of pleasure.

Some years ago, being near Houghton, in the county of Norfolk, we called to see the celebrated group of the Laocoon; a counterpart, I believe, of that in the Medici gallery at Florence; in reference to which Thomson has these expressive lines:

"Such agonies! such bitterness of pain!

Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone,
That the touch'd heart engrosses all the view."

We found this group, however, not the Laocoon of Virgil, as we had anticipated; for the poet makes the serpents tear the children, and then attack the father; whereas the sculptor, with greater sculptural effect, makes them wind round all three at the same time. The expression of the sons indicates physical pain only; that of the father, however, is characteristic not only of physical, but of mental pain: and here the question presents itself, which is the more difficult to bear, bodily pain or mental pain?

Our state in infancy proves that we come into a world founded on a system of good and ill, pleasure and pain. Those who labour under severe bodily evils do not pray for a change to mental evils, nor those afflicted with mental evils pray for a change to bodily ones. Mental pain frequently leads to suicide; and yet, before mental pain can be felt at all, where there is a great bodily one, the latter must be first removed. From this it is evident that bodily pain is more acute than mental pain, and yet the latter appears to be the more insupportable.

Thus no one commits suicide under the apprehension of a dangerous operation, because a hope exists that the operation will alleviate the pain. Thousands, however, commit suicide in the apprehension of evils allied to vanity, and that even the most insignificant vanity.

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The origin of pain I shall not discuss. The Great Being is not to be measured by a human standard: My ways," is his language, "are not your ways." There is a curious reciprocity in effect in regard to the pains of mind and body. Physical pain relieves mental pain, and mental pain relieves physical pain. Does this prove identity? or does it not rather imply the separate existence of body and mind?

Formed as we are, pain is to pleasure what darkness is to light. Nay, an excess of light is more insupportable than darkness itself; and did the sun perpetually shine on our hemispheres, though a practical knowledge might be had of the infinitely little, we could have none whatever of the infinitely vast. Our upward view would be confined to the clouds. As it is, the Eternal speaks in every star, in every wave, in every leaf-in every act and impulse, too, of the mind.

For my own part, I often reflect on the last words of Schiller: "Calmer and calmer; many difficult things are growing plain and clear to me. Let us be patient !" Pleasure and pain melt into each other, as exha

lations from the earth become blended and neutralized by the heats of summer, and the frosts and drying winds of winter:

"Hence is it, we have scarce an hour of life

In which our pleasures relish not some pain,
Our sours some sweetness."

We might, indeed, almost say of them,
"Each gives to each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Ethiop's arm."

When misfortune operates well, it is more to be admired than prosperity. But occasional successes, nevertheless, are re-enforcements to virtue, more than equal to armies of reserve in days of battle. It cannot be denied that great wickedness often springs up in the heart of man elevated by success. Hence

apparent evils may become inestimable benefits, and apparent benefits may engender evils neither to be endured nor overcome. Great fortunes, indeed, are often ruined by the same passions that concur to raise them; and this is one of the reasons why great promotions do by no means conspire to men's felicity, producing rather

"Vexation, disappointment, and remorse."

Dr. Young truly says of misfortune,

""Tis the kind hand of Providence, stretched out
"Twixt man and vanity."

In the midst of all our trials, it is well to remember what was said by Solon, that if every one should bring his evils to be cast into one mass, every one would carry his own troubles home, rather than throw them away and select an equal number from the general heap.

I cannot fathom the designs and purposes of a man whose actions I know, whose character I can scan, who stands full before me, and is subjected to the utmost scrutiny of my gaze. Shall I, then, think to fathom the deep councils of a Being whom no one yet has seen, and whose works a Galileo, a Kepler,

and a Newton contemplated with wonder and astonishment? Surely I cannot. But I can submit to his dispensations, and discipline my mind in a full expectation that he will convert such evil in the end into essential good. This is all I can say, and in this conviction I contentedly rest.

THE GREAT CHANGE.

How beautiful and affecting are these lines! "Years following years steal something every day : At last they steal us from ourselves away.'

Bentham left his body to the surgeons, and he was dissected according to his will. Sir Humphrey Davy, on the contrary, gave strict injunctions that, in regard to him, no anatomical examination should take place. He had a dread of post mortem inspection; for he considered it possible that sensation might remain in the animal fibre after the loss of irritability, and the power of giving proof to others of its existence.

The first idea of life is its being a principle of selfpreservation; the next, that it is a principle of action. It exists in every part of an animal body. In death, the action of the capillary vessels is the first to fail; of the brain, the sensitive function is the first, the vital the last.

The stimulus of dying does not always conquer the faculties till the last moment; for in the last moments of some, the life, not only of the affections, but of the understanding, exists complete and unimpaired.

And here we may be pardoned a few words in respect to our bodily change. Our existence is dependant on a succession of changes. The body undergoes them perpetually. It is not the same body at forty that it was at ten, twenty, or even thirty.

Not a single particle of what constituted our frame at five exists perhaps at twenty, and at death the whole will doubtless enter into new combinations.

Love and Death are Nature's greatest ministers. The one calls us into existence, the other calls us from it. Happy are those who arrive at the end of their journey with a serene countenance, calm and assured

"That true existence has not yet begun."

Seneca was accustomed to say, that if every man would speak as he ought, he would confess that many of the things he feared were far better than those he prayed for; and this assuredly may be applied to death, since a just consideration in respect to that makes all the miseries of life comparatively easy.

It is certain that men value existence more and more the shorter the vista of life becomes, like the spells of a magician, which were believed to increase proportionately as the circle narrowed.

I cannot say this myself. To me, death has long ceased to be a phantom of darkness, silence, decaya heap of ashes, and a scene of destruction. The more frequently I gaze on its ensigns, and meditate on the resuscitation that will follow it, the less offensive does its contemplation become, as the sting of the scorpion pierces less and less painfully at every repetition. I gaze on a funeral more like a child than a man. The procession moves and the bell tolls, more to please and delight than to threaten and appal. I have tears only for those that survive.

Death seldom strikes all the organs at once. They are generally attacked separately, and the lungs are the last to surrender their functions.

Death is so mild a friend that he gives not a single pang, those contortions which sometimes precede men's last moments being pains only to the eye of observers. Muscular motion often survives