can it answer the second, and come unexpected. We once heard a recruit assign as his reason for enlisting, that he should now at least see something of life." And," added his companion, "something of death." The poor fellow, perhaps, like many others, had forgotten that any such contingency was included in the bond. The Duke d'Enghien appeared to feel like a man reprieved, when, on issuing from his prison, he found he was to perish by a military execution. Suicides are prone to use the implements of their trade. It was the usage in Ireland in rude times, when rebels perhaps were more plentiful than rope, to hang them with willows. In the reign of Elizabeth a criminal of this description petitioned the deputy against the breach of the observance, and begged the favor to suffer by the time-honored " wyth," instead of the new-fangled halter. When Elizabeth herself expected Mary to put her to death, she had resolved on the request to be beheaded with a sword, and not with an axe,-which seems a distinction without a difference. In the same category we may place Lord Ferrers's prayer for a silken rope at Tyburn. But the fancy of the Duke of Clarence, could it be considered established, is the most singular on record. He must have been strangely infatuated by the "Pleasures of Memory," when he imagined his favorite Malmsey could give a relish to drowning. Suffocation was not more luxurious to the parasites of Elagabalus that they were stifled with per held to be pious and privileged; father performed it for son, son for father. They considered they were curtailing the dreaded death struggle-that a headlong fall from the precipice was as much easier as it was quicker than the winding descent by the path. In France it was the established practice to put to death persons attacked by hydrophobia the moment the disease was plainly incurable. There is a vulgar notion that those who are wounded by a rabid dog become inoculated with the animal's propensity to bite. But the motive of self-defence of ridding the world of a fellow-creature who had entered into the class of noxious beings, which might be suspected to have had an influence in hard-hearted times-was not the source of these unnatural homicides. They were designed in pure pity to the wretched sufferers, though the tender mercies which are wicked are always cruel. Lestoile in his Journal, which belongs to the early part of the seventeenth century, relates the events of the kind which came to his knowledge under the date of their occurrence. A young woman attacked with hydrophobia had in such horror the smothering, which, the Diarist quietly observes in a parenthesis, "is usual in these maladies," that she was rendered more frantic by the prospect of the remedy than by the present disease. Habit with her relations was stronger than nature; they had no idea of remitting the customary violence, even at the entreaties of the interested person, and only so far yielded to her dread of suffocation as to mingle poison with her mediOld Fuller, having pondered all the modes cine instead, which Lestoile says was adminof destruction, arrived at the short and deci-istered by her husband" with all the regrets sive conclusion-None please me." "But in the world." Sometimes, however, the vicaway," the good man adds, "with these tims invited their doom. A page, on his way thoughts; the mark must not choose what to the sea, then esteemed a specific in hydroarrow shall be shot against it." The choice phobia, was scratched by a thorn which drew is not ours to make, and if it were, the priv- blood, as he passed through a wood. For a ilege would prove an embarrassment. But person in his condition to see his own blood there is consolation in the teaching of phy- was supposed to be fatal. The lad, appresiology. Of the innumerable weapons with hending the accession of a fit, begged the which Death is armed, the worst is less in- attendants to smother him on the spot, "and tolerable than imagination presents it-his this," says Lestoile, "they did weeping-an visage is more terrible than his dart. event piteous to hear, and still more to behold." A second page is mentioned by the same Diarist, who happily died as they were preparing to shoot him. It is evident how much these domestic immolations must have weakened the awful reverence for life; the weeping executioner of his dearest relatives was separated by a far less impassable gulf from the cold-blooded murderer. A medical trickery, which grew no doubt from the frightful reality, still remains in France fumes. The act of dying is technically termed "the agony." The expression embodies a common and mistaken belief, which has gived birth to many cruel and even criminal pracn tices. The Venetian ambassador in Englanin the reign of Queen Mary mentions among the regular usages of the lower orders, that a pillow was placed upon the mouth of the dying, on which their nearest relations sat or leaned till they were stifled. The office was among the resources of medicine. Hydrophobia is sometimes feigned, and when the physician suspects imposture he orders the patient to be smothered between a couple of mattresses, which cures him, says Orfila, as if by enchantment. A mode of suffocation less murderous in appearance than the smothering with the pillow was prevalent for centuries, both on the Continent and in England. The supports were withdrawn by a jerk from beneath the head, which being suddenly thrown back, the respiration that before was labored and difficult became shortly impossible. Hence it is that Shakspeare's Timon, enumerating the accursed effects of gold, says that it will "Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads." "I would write how easy and delightful it is to die." "If this be dying," said the niece of Newton of Olney, "it is a pleasant thing to die;" "the very expression," adds her uncle, "which another friend of mine made use of on her death-bed a few years ago." The same words have so often been uttered under similar circumstances, that we could fill pages with instances which are only varied by the name of the speaker. "If this be dying," said Lady Glenorchy, "it is the easiest thing imaginable." "I thought that dying had been more difficult," said Louis XIV. “I did not suppose it was so sweet to die," said Francis Suarez, the Spanish theologian. An agreeable surprise was the prevailing sentiment with them all; they expected the stream to terminate in the dash of the torrent, and they found it was losing itself in the gentlest current. The whole of the faculties seem sometimes concentrated on the placid enjoyment. The day Arthur Murphy died he kept "Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, Another practice which tortured the dying under pretence of relief, even in this country, lingered among the ignorant till recent days. The expiring ascetic of the Romish faith, pro-repeating from Pope, longing his penance into death, yielded up his breath on a couch of hair. Customs survive when their reasons are forgotten. A physical virtue had come to be ascribed to the hair, and Protestants, slowly sinking to their rest, were dragged from their feather-beds, and laid on a mattress to quicken their departure. The result of most of these perverted proceedings was to combine the disadvantages of both kinds of death-to add the horror of violence to the protracted pain of gradual decay. When the wearied swimmer touched the shore, a furious billow dashed him on the rock. The pain of dying must be distinguished from the pain of the previous disease, for when life ebbs sensibility declines. As death is the final extinction of corporal feeling, so numbness increases as death comes on. The prostration of disease, like healthful fatigue, engenders a growing stupor a sensation of subsiding softly into a coveted repose. The transition resembles what may be seen in those lofty mountains, whose sides exhibiting every climate in regular gradation, vegetation luxuriates at their base, and dwindles in the approach to the regions of snow till its feeblest manifestation is repressed by the cold. The so-called agony can never be more formidable than when the brain is the last to go, and the mind preserves to the end a rational cognizance of the state of the body. Yet persons thus situated commonly attest that there are few things in life less painful than the close. "If I had strength enough to hold a pen," said William Hunter, To welcome death, and calmly pass away." Nor does the calm partake of the sensitiveness of sickness. There was a swell in the sea the day Collingwood breathed his last upon the element which had been the scene of his glory. Captain Thomas expressed a fear that he was disturbed by the tossing of the ship: "No, Thomas," he replied; "I am now in a state in which nothing in this world can disturb me more. I am dying: and I am sure it must be consolatory to you, and all who love me, to see how comfortably I am coming to my end." A second and common condition of the dying is to be lost to themselves and all around them in utter unconsciousness. Countenance and gestures might in many cases suggest that, however dead to the external world, interior sensibility still remained. But we have the evidence of those whom disease has left at the eleventh hour, that while their supposed sufferings were pitied by their friends, existence was a blank. Montaigne, when stunned by a fall from his horse, tore open his doublet; but he was entirely senseless, and only knew afterward that he had done it from the information of the attendants. The delirium of fever is distressing to witness, but the victim awakes from it as from a heavy sleep, totally ignorant that he has passed days and nights tossing wearily and talking wildly. Perceptions which had occupied the entire man could hardly be obliterated in the instant of recovery; or, if any one were in clined to adopt the solution, there is yet a proof that the callousness is real, in the unflinching manner in which bed-sores are rolled upon, that are too tender to bear touching when sense is restored. Wherever there is insensibility, virtual death precedes death itself, and to die is to awake in another world. More usually the mind is in a state intermediate between activity and oblivion. Observers, unaccustomed to sit by the bed of death, readily mistake increasing languor for total insensibility. But those who watch closely can distinguish that the ear, though dull, is not yet deaf-that the eye, though dim, is not yet sightless. When a bystander remarked of Dr. Wollaston that his mind was gone, the expiring philosopher made a signal for paper and pencil, wrote down some figures, and cast them up. The superior energy of his character was the principal difference between himself and thousands who die and give no open sign. Their faculties survive, though averse to even the faintest effort, and they barely testify in languid and broken phrases that the torpor of the body more than keeps pace with the inertness of the mind. The same report is given by those who have advanced to the very border of the country from whence no traveler returns. Montaigne after his accident passed for a corpse, and the first feeble indications of returning life resembled some of the commonest symptoms of death. But his own feelings were those of a man who is dropping into the sweets of slumber, and his longing was toward blank rest, and not for recovery. "Methought,' he says, "my life only hung upon my lips; and I shut my eyes to help to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and letting myself go.' In many of these instances, as in the cases of stupefaction, there are appearances which we have learnt to associate with suffering, because constantly conjoined with it. A cold perspiration bedews the skin, the breathing is harsh and labored, and sometimes, especially in delicate frames, death is ushered in by convulsive movements which look like the wrestling with an oppressive enemy. But they are signs of debility and a failing system, which have no relation to pain. There is hardly an occasion when the patient fights more vehemently for life than in an attack of asthma, which, in fact, is a sufficiently distressing disorder before the sensibility is blunted and the strength subdued. But the termination is not to be judged by the beginning. Dr. Campbell, the well-known Scotch professor, had a seizure, which all but carried him off, a few months before he succumbed to the disease. A cordial gave him unexpected relief; and his first words were to express astonishment at the sad countenance of his friends, because his own mind, he told them, was in such a state at the crisis of the attack, from the expectation of immediate dissolution, that there was no other way to describe his feelings than by saying he was in rapture. Light, indeed, must have been the suffering as he gasped for breath, since physical agony, had it existed, would have quite subdued the mental ecstasy. As little is the death-sweat forced out by anguish. Cold as ice, his pulse nearly gone, "a mortal perspiration ran down the body" of La Boëtie, the friend of Montaigne, and it was at this very moment that, roused by the weeping of his relations, he exclaimed, "Who is it that torments me thus? Why was I snatched from my deep and pleasant repose? Oh! of what rest do you deprive me!" Such fond lamentations disturb many a last moment; and the dying often remonstrate by looks when they cannot by words. Hard as it may be to control emotions with the very heart-strings ready to crack, pity demands an effort in which the strongest affection will be surest of success. The grief will not be more bitter in the end, that to keep it back had been the last service of love. Tears are a tribute of which those who bestow it should bear all the cost. A worse torment is the attempt to arrest forcibly the exit of life by pouring cordials down throats which can no longer swallow, or more madly to goad the motionless body into a manifestation of existence by the appliance of pain. It is like the plunge of the spur into the side of the courser, which rouses him as he is falling, to take another bound before he drops to rise But the most approved method of what, in the language of the time, was called "fetching again," was to send a stream of smoke up the nostrils, which Hooker states to be "the wonted practicing of well-willers upon their friends, although they know it a matter impossible to keep them living;" and wellwilling thoughtlessness among our peasantry to this very hour often endeavors to rescue friends from the grasp of death by torturing them into making one writhing struggle. The gentle nature of our great dramatist taught him, that to those descending into the grave nothing was more grateful than its own still- | ness. Salisbury, at the death of Cardinal Beaufort, interposes with the remonstrance, “Disturb him not, let him pass peaceably." And when Edgar is calling to Lear, "Look up, my lord, per Kent, with reverent tenderness, says, It is not always that sickness merges into the agony. The strained thread may break at last with a sudden snap. This is by no means rare in consumption. Burke's son, upon whom his father has conferred something of his own celebrity, heard his parents sobbing in another room at the prospect of an event they knew to be inevitable. He rose from his bed, joined his illustrious father, and endeavored to engage him in a cheerful conversation. Burke continued silent, choked with grief. His son again made an effort to console him. "I am under no terror," he said; "I feel myself better and in spirits, and yet my heart flutters, I know not why. Pray talk to me, sir! talk of religion, talk of morality, talk, if you will, of indifferent subjects." Here a noise attracted his notice, and he exclaimed, "Does it rain ?—No; it is the rustling of the wind through the trees." The whistling of the wind and the waving of the trees brought Milton's majestic lines to his mind, and he repeated them with uncommon grace and effect: ence of the Creator to whom his body was bent in homage, and whose praises still resounded from his lips. But commonly the hand of death is felt for one brief moment before the work is done. Yet a parting word, or an expression of prayer, in which the face and voice retain their composure, show that there is nothing painful in the warning. It was in this way that Boileau expired from the effects of a dropsy. A friend entered the room where he was sitting; and the poet, in one and the same breath, bid him hail and farewell. "Good day and adieu," said he; "it will be a very long adieu,"-and instantly died. In sudden death which is not preceded by sickness, the course of events is much the same. Some expire in the performance of the ordinary actions of life, some with a halfcompleted sentence on their lips; some in the midst of a quiet sleep. Many die without a sound, many with a single sigh, many with merely a struggle and a groan. In other instances there are two or three minutes of contest and distress, and in proportion as the termination is distant from the commencement of the attack, there will be room for the ordinary pangs of disease. But upon the whole there can be no death less awful than the death which comes in the midst of life, if it were not for the shock it gives the survivors and the probability with most that it will find them unprepared. When there are only a few beats of the pulse, and a few heavings of the bosom between health and the grave, it can signify little whether they are the throbbings of pain, or the thrills of joy, or the mechanical movements of an un conscious frame. There is, then, no foundation for the idea that the pain of dying is the climax to the pain of disease, for, unless the stage of the agony is crossed at a stride, disease stupefies when it is about to kill. If the anguish of the sickness has been extreme, so striking from the contrast is the ease that supervenes, that without even the temporary revival which distinguishes the lightening before death-"kind nature's signal for retreat" is believed to be the signal of the retreat of the disease. Pushkin, the Russian poet, suffered agony from a wound received in a duel. His wife, deceived by the deep tranquillity which A second time he took up the sublime and succeeded, left the room with a countenance melodious strain, and, accompanying the ac- beaming with joy, and exclaimed to the phytion to the word, waved his own hand in to- sician, "You see, he is to live; he will not ken of worship, and sunk into the arms of his die." "But at this moment," says the narfather a corpse. Not a sensation told him rative, "the last process of vitality had althat in an instant he would stand in the pres-ready Where the symptoms are "His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines; With every plant, in sign of worship, wave!" begun." those of recovery there is in truth more pain to be endured than when the issue is death, for sickness does not relinquish its hold in relaxing its grasp. In the violence which produces speedy insensibility the whole of the downward course is easy compared to the subsequent ascent. When Montaigne was stunned, he passed, we have seen, from stupor to a dreamy elysium. But when returning life had thawed the numbness engendered by the blow, then it was that the pains got hold of him which imagination pictures as incident to death. Cowper, on reviving after his attempt to hang himself, thought he was in hell; and those who are taken senseless from the water, and afterward recovered, re-echo the sentiment though they may vary the phrase. This is what we should upon reflection expect. The body is quickly deadened and slowly restored; and from the moment corporal sensitiveness returns, the throes of the still disordered functions are so many efforts of pain. In so far as it is a question of bodily suffering, death is the lesser evil of the two. test. Of the trials to be undergone before dying sets in, everybody, from personal experience or observation of disease, has formed a general idea. Duration is an element as important as intensity, and slow declines, which are not accompanied by any considerable suffering, put patience and fortitude to a severe 'My friends," said the Fontenelle, a short time before he died, "I have no pain, -only a little difficulty in keeping up life;" but this little difficulty becomes a great fatigue when protracted without intermission through weeks and months. More, the Platonist, who was afflicted in this way, described his feelings by the expressive comparison that he was as a fish out of its element, which lay tumbling in the dust of the street. With all the kindness bestowed upon the sick, there is sometimes a disposition to judge them by the standard of our own healthy sensations, and blame them for failings which are the effects of disease. We complain that they are selfish, not always remembering that it is the importunity of suffering which makes them exacting; we call them impatient -forgetful that, though ease cau afford to wait, pain craves immediate relief; we think them capricious, and overlook that fancy pictures solace in appliances which aggravate upon trial, and add disappointment to distress. There is not any situation in which steady minds and sweet dispositions evince a greater superiority over the hasty and sensual part of mankind; but self-control adapts it | self to the ordinary exigences of life, and if surprised by evils with which it has not been accustomed to measure its strength, the firmest nerve and the sunniest temper are overcome by the sudden violence of the assault. Unless the understanding is affected, irritability and waywardness constantly diminish when experience has shown the wisdom and duty of patience, and there soon springs up with well-ordered minds a generous rivalry between submission on the one hand and forbearance on the other. From the hour that sin and death entered into the world, it was mercy that disease and decay should enter too. A sick-room is a school of virtue, whether we are spectators of the mortality of our dearest connections, or are experiencing our own. Violent often differs little from natural death. Many poisons destroy by setting up disorders resembling those to which flesh is the inevitable heir, and as in ordinary sickness, though the disorder may be torture, the mere dying is easy. The drugs which kill with the rapidity of lightning, or which act by lulling the whole of the senses to sleep, can first or last create no suffering worthy of the name. Fatal hemorrhage is another result both of violence and disease, and from the example of Seneca-his prolonged torments after his veins were opened, and his recourse to a second method of destruction to curtail the bitterness of the first--was held by Sir Thomas Browne to be a dreadful kind of death. Browne was more influenced by what he read than by what he saw, or he must have observed in the course of his practice that it is not of necessity, nor in general, an agonizing process. The pain depends upon the rate at which life is reduced below the point where sensibility ends. The sluggish blood of the aged Seneca refused to flow in an ample stream, and left him just enough vigor to feel and to suffer. A fuller discharge takes rapid effect, and renders the suffering trifling by making it short. An obstruction to respiration is beyond comparison more painful than total suffocation. To be shot dead is one of the easiest modes of terminating life; yet, rapid as it is, the body has leisure to feel and the mind to reflect. On the first attempt by one of the fanatic adherents of Spain to assassinate the William, Prince of Orange, who took the lead in the Revolt of the Netherlands, the ball passed through the bones of his face, and brought him to the ground. In the instant of time that preceded stupefaction, he was able to frame the notion that the |