sensation.* We quit the scene as we entered it, compulsively and unconsciously; and, "Ere we can feel, the friendly stroke is o'er." Why, indeed, should we consider death an evil of such gigantic magnitude? Is it an unconquerable feeling implanted in our bosoms by the hand of Nature? or is it the more probable effect of early association and of vitiated education? I am inclined to believe, that were we, when children, taught to consider death only as a cavern, through which we must necessarily pass in our road to a happier region; did we, in our manhood, look upon death as the sister of sleep and the mother of rest; were the unfortunate to hail it as a refuge from trouble, and the old as a translation to another country, where their youth would be renewed and rendered eternal: did we, in the different stages of our existence, thus contemplate it, should we not hail this King of Terrors as a friend rather than as an enemy? It is curious, that the only ancient gem extant, personifying death, represents him as dancing to the music of a flute; and when the poets would allegorize a child dying in its bud, they fable Aurora stealing it from the arms of its parents. “The gods," says Seneca, "conceal the happiness of death in order to induce us to live ;" and Juvenal directs us to pray for a mind which considers death as a consummation most anxiously to be wished. "Were our eyes," said Madame de Staël, on the death of her father, "permitted to take a clear view of the opposite shore, who would remain on this desolate coast?" * Sir Henry Halford and Dr. Roget are both of opinion that, before the commencement of the last scene, the power of feeling has wholly ceased, and the physical struggle is carried on by the vital powers alone, without any consciousness on the part of the patient: "whose death," says the latter, “may be said to precede for some time that of the body."-See his noble work on Anim. and Veget. Physiology, vol. ii., p. 624. Porphyry says of the Brachmans that they looked for nothing so eagerly as this consummation, considering life in the light of a pilgrimage; and Herodotus and Strabo speak of nations who mourned at the birth of an infant, and rejoiced at the prospect of death. Lucan informs us that the Celts esteemed it a passage to long life; in consequence of which, they eagerly sought it in battle. Valerius Maximus even assures us that the Gauls were so confident of immortality, that they not unfrequently lent money to be paid in a future state. Diodorus relates, that when Dionysius the elder took Rheggio, he resolved to make an example of the governor, for having defended the city with so much obstinacy. Previous to executing the punishment designed for him, with a view of aggravating his sufferings, he told him that he had the previous day put his son and his kindred to death. The tyrant, however, was greatly disappointed; for the governor, whose name was Phyton, so far from exhibiting any affliction on that account, exclaimed, "then they are by one day happier than myself." The Thracians rejoiced at a burial, which they esteemed the road to beatitude, and therefore indulged in all manner of festivities. The Wahabee Arabs regard it impious to mourn for the dead; "that is," say they, "for those who are in Paradise." The Javanese make a succession of feasts upon the decease of their friends and relatives. One of these is upon the day of the decease; another on the third day after; then on the seventh; a fourth on the fortieth day; a fifth on the hundredth; and the last on the thousandth. This custom is almost universal in Java. The Banyans of Hindustan have a similar practice. They have also a maxim, that it is better to sit still than to walk; better to sleep than to wake; better to die than to sleep. In the province of Biscay, too, great rejoicings are made at the death of persons who die before the age of maturity. They are taken uncovered to the grave; white roses are placed upon their heads; there is a band of music, and the attendants signify their joy at what they call the happiness of innocence: "O weep not for him: 'tis unkindness to weep; The weary, weak frame hath but fallen asleep : O weep not-O break not-its gentle repose." Cyrus, on the bed of death, desired the Persians to rejoice at his funeral, and not to lament as if he were really dead. And Dr. Hunter, a few moments before his decease, said to a friend who attended him, "If I had strength to hold a pen, I would write how easy and how pleasant a thing it is to die!" Tasso, too, when informed by his friend and physician, Rinaldini, that he had no hopes of his recovery, gratefully exclaimed, "Oh God! I thank thee that thou art pleased to bring me safe into port after so long a storm.” Walking some time since in the churchyard of old St. Pancras, to muse among the monuments, my attention was arrested by a head engraved upon a tombstone. On looking at the inscription, I found it to be that of TIBERIUS CAVALLO, author of different treatises on magnetism, aërostation, electricity, the nature and properties of air, and other subjects of natural philosophy. He was born at Naples (1749), and died in London (1809). I never saw this excellent man but once; but that was to me a highly interesting interview. "Sir," said he, at parting, "remember what a man near sixty tells you. The world, in itself, has little or nothing to claim the sojourn of men. We all came into it for something: we shall all go out of it for more.' Men creep insensibly into age, and in the progress of transition become familiarized with its aspects and inconveniences. But death, for the most part, is as much a stranger to age as to youth. Both should so live that he may be greeted with joy whenever he comes. It is early association that hides from us the advantages of death: for glorious, doubtless, are the secrets we shall hear, and the scenes we shall behold, when death has shut the gates of life, and opened the portals of eternity. FUTURITY. LORENZO DE MEDICI Said to the excellent abbot Mariano, "He is dead to this life who has no hopes of another." And I think he in a great part is so. It was our comparative insignificance, when placed in comparison with the mighty whole, which first induced Lord Byron to imagine that our pretensions to immortality might be overrated. But he should have remembered that, with the Eternal Being, as nothing is great, so nothing is insignificant or small. "We are born with the desire and means of improving ourselves," said Pascal," and this is a proof of the change to which we are destined." A calm and steady purpose on which to fix the intellectual eye, is necessary for a victory over sorrow, as in the midst of torment there is always relief from bodily exercise. Plunged in action, we feel as if we had neither power nor time to die. Then again come grief and pain: death looks us in the face; hope quickens ; "The triumph and the trance begin, And all the phoenix spirit burns within." Some deny the immortality of the soul, because they cannot imagine its existence separate from the body. To such we may safely reply, by asking them (with Cicero), "Can you imagine what it is when united to the body?" Where the uninstructed eye contemplates annihilation, the chymist recognises nothing more than decomposition, unity with other substances, or changes of the same materials into other forms. Annihilation in the material world is never once dreamed of. Why, then, should it be in the spiritual? We might as well imagine that silex and alkali cease to exist because they are converted into glass. Pope said to Spence a short time previous to his death, "I am so certain of the soul's immortality, that I seem to feel it within me, as it were, by inspiration." After traversing the universe in my imagination, and the visible phenomena of this world in particular, every analogy, from the material to the mental, proves to my conviction, as clearly as any diagram in geometry, that our state of imperfection is a consequence of our being in a state of progression ; that our present frame is not essential to our existence; and that a future state is absolutely necessary to the justification of Providence. Mind is an integral part of the universe-perhaps the most essential part. That it exists is even more certain than that what we call matter exists. It is more wonderful in its construction and operations, and therefore more difficult to analyze and compress. All things in Nature whisper the secret, "You shall never die: but you shall be changed." A short time since, at a coffee-house in Bath, I heard a gentleman near seventy make the following remark: "I do not see so much benevolence in the creation as you do. The chief that I recognise are skill and power. Nature makes beautiful objects apparently only to destroy them, and those who are called virtuous only to permit them to be miserable." "I am glad you put in the word apparently," said a gentleman who sat opposite. things began and terminated only as we see, I might, perhaps, judge of them as you do. But we see the outsides of things only. We know no more of fix DD "If |