jealousy cruel as the grave? What is it that we go forth to see in Hamlet? Is it a reed shaken with the wind? A small celandine? A bed of daffodils? Or is it to contemplate a mighty and wayward mind laid bare before us to the inmost recesses? It may perhaps be doubted whether the lakes and the hills are better fitted for the education of a poet than the dusty streets of a huge capital. Indeed, who is not tired to death with pure description of scenery? Is it not the fact that external objects never strongly excite our feelings but when they are contemplated with reference to man, as illustrating his destiny or as influencing his character? The most beautiful object in the world, it will be allowed, is a beautiful woman. But who that can analyze his feelings is not sensible that she owes her fascination less to grace of outline and delicacy of colour than to a thousand associations which, often unperceived by ourselves, connect those qualities with the source of our existence, with the nourishment of our infancy, with the passions of our youth, with the hopes of our age, with elegance, with vivacity, with tenderness, with the strongest natural instincts, with the dearest of social ties? To those who think thus, the insensibility of the Florentine poet to the beauties of nature will not appear an unpardonable deficiency. On mankind no writer, with the exception of Shakspeare, has looked with a more penetrating eye. LORD MACAULAY: Criticisms on the Principal Italian I cannot refrain, however, from saying a few words upon the translations of the Divine Comedy. Boyd's is as tedious and languid as the | original is rapid and forcible. The strange measure which he has chosen, and, for aught I know, invented, is most unfit for such a work. Translations ought never to be written in a verse which requires much command of rhyme. The stanza becomes a bed of Procrustes, and the thoughts of the unfortunate author are alternately racked and curtailed to fit their new receptacle. The abrupt and yet consecutive style of Dante suffers more than that of any other poet by a version diffuse in style and divided into paragraphs-for they deserve no other name -of equal length. Nothing can be said in favour of Hayley's attempt, but that it is better than Boyd's. His mind was a tolerable specimen of filigree work,-rather elegant, and very feeble. All that can be said for his best works He is that they are neat. All that can be said against his worst is that they are stupid. might have translated Metastasio tolerably. he was utterly unable to do justice to the But too long, I could dwell with great pleasure. At Criticisms on the Principal Italian DAY OF JUDGMENT. As the Supreme Being is the only proper judge of our perfections, so he is the only fit rewarder of them. This is a consideration that comes home to our interest, as the other adapts itself to our ambition. And what could the most aspiring or the most selfish man desire more, were he to form the notion of a Being to whom he would recommend himself, than such a knowledge as can discover the least appearance of perfection in him, and such a goodness as will proportion a reward to it? Let the ambitious man, therefore, turn all his desire of fame this way; and, that he may propose to himself a fame worthy of his ambition, let him consider, that if he employs his abilities to the best advantage, the time will come when the Supreme Governor of the world, the great Judge of mankind, who sees every degree of perfection in others, and possesses all possible perfection in himself, shall proclaim his worth before men and angels, and pronounce to him in the presence of the whole creation that best and most significant of applauses, “ Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into thy Master's joy." ADDISON: Spectator, No. 257. As a thinking man cannot but be very much affected with the idea of his appearing in the presence of that Being "whom none can see and live," he must be much more affected when he considers that this Being whom he appears before will examine all the actions of his past life, and reward and punish him accordingly. I must confess that I think there is no scheme of religion besides that of Christianity which can possibly support the most virtuous person under this thought. Let a man's innocence be what it will, let his virtues rise to the highest pitch of perfection attainable in this life, there will be still in him so many secret sins, so many human frailties, so many offences of ignorance, passions, and prejudice, so many unguarded words and thoughts, and, in short, so many defects in his best actions, that, without the advantages of such an expiation and atonement as Christianity has revealed to us, it is impossible that he should be A time there will be when all these unequal distributions of good and evil shall be set right, and the wisdom of all his transactions made as clear as the noonday. ATTERBURY. God will indeed judge the world in righteous ness; but it is by an evangelical, not a legal, righteousness, and by the intervention of the man Christ Jesus, who is the Saviour as well as ATTERBURY. the Judge of the world. How can we think of appearing at that tribunal without being able to give a ready answer to the questions which he shall then put to us about the poor and the afflicted, the hungry and the naked, the sick and the imprisoned? ATTERBURY. What confusion of face shall we be under when that grand inquest begins; when an account of our opportunities of doing good, and a particular of our use or misuse of them, is given in! ATTERBURY. The secret manner in which acts of mercy ought to be performed requires this public manifestation of them at the great day. ATTERBURY. At the day of general account good men are then to be consigned over to another state, a state of everlasting love and charity. ATTERBURY. God hath reserved many things to his own resolution, whose determinations we cannot hope from flesh; but with reverence must suspend unto that great day whose justice shall either condemn our curiosity or resolve our disquisitions. SIR T. BROWNE. It may justly serve for matter of extreme terror to the wicked, whether they regard the dreadfulness of the day in which they shall be tried, or the quality of the judge by whom they are to be tried. HAKEWILL: On Providence. What greater heart-breaking and confusion can there be to one than to have all his secret faults laid open, and the sentence of condemnation passed upon him? HAKEWILL. At the day of judgment, the attention excited by the surrounding scene, the strange aspect of nature, the dissolution of the elements, and the last trump, will have no other effect than to cause the reflections of the sinner to return with a more overwhelming tide on his own character, his sentence, his unchanging destiny; and amidst the innumerable millions who surround him, he will mourn apart. It is thus the Christian minister should endeavour to prepare the tribunal of conscience, and turn the eyes of every one of his hearers on himself. ROBERT HALL: Discouragements and Supports of the Methinks neither the voice of the archangel, nor the trump of God, nor the dissolution of the elements, nor the face of the Judge itself, from which the heavens will flee away, will be so dismaying and terrible to these men as the sight of the poor members of Christ; whom, having spurned and rejected in the days of their humiliation, they will then behold with amazement united to their Lord, covered with his glory, and seated on his throne. How will they be astonished to see them surrounded with so much majesty! How will they cast down their eyes in their presence! How will they curse that gold which will then eat their flesh as with fire, and that avarice, that indolence, that voluptuousness which will entitle them to so much misery! You will then learn that the imitation of Christ is the only wisdom: you will then be convinced it is better to be endeared to the cottage than admired in the palace; when to have wiped the tears of the afflicted, and inherited the prayers of the widow and the fatherless, shall be found a richer patrimony than the favour of princes. ROBERT HALL: Reflections on War. Whether I eat or drink, or in whatever other action or employment I am engaged, that solemn voice always seems to sound in my ears, "Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.' As often as I think of the day of judgment, my heart quakes, and my whole frame trembles. If I am to indulge in any of the pleasures of the present life, I am resolved to do it in such a way that the solemn realities of the future judgment may never be banished from my recollection. ST. JEROME. It cannot but be matter of very dreadful consideration to any one, sober and in his wits, to think seriously with himself, what horror and confusion must needs surprise that man, at the last day of account, who had led his whole life by one rule, when God intends to judge him by another. SOUTH. O the inexpressible horror that will seize upon a sinner when he stands arraigned at the bar of his judge, the witnesses, all his remorseless addivine justice! when he shall see his accuser, versaries! SOUTH. Could I give you a lively representation of guilt and horror on this hand, and point out eternal wrath and decipher eternal vengeance on the other, then might I show you the condition of a sinner hearing himself denied by Christ. SOUTH. At doomsday, when the terrors are universal, besides that it is in itself so much greater, because it can affright the whole world, it is also made greater by communication and a sorrowful influence; grief being then strongly infectious when there is no variety of state, but an entire kingdom of fear; and amazement is the king of all our passions, and all the world its subjects. And that shriek must needs be terrible when millions of men and women, at the same instant, shall fearfully cry out, and the noise shall mingle with the trumpet of the archangel, with the thunders of the dying and groaning heavens, and the crack of the dissolving world, when the whole fabric of nature shall shake into dissolution and eternal ashes! JEREMY TAYLOR. All the precepts, promises, and threatenings of the gospel will rise up in judgment against us; and the articles of our faith will be so many articles of accusation: and the great weight of our charge will be this, that we did not obey the gospel, which we professed to believe; that we made confession of the Christian faith, but lived like heathens. TILLOTSON. How couldst thou look for other but that God should condemn thee for the doing of those things for which thine own conscience did condemn thee all the while thou wast doing of them? TILLOTSON. God will one time or another make a difference between the good and the evil. But there is little or no difference made in this world; therefore there must be another world wherein this difference shall be made. DR. I. WATTS: Logic. DEATH. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, facWhen I read tions, and debates of mankind. the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 26 (Visit to Westminster Abbey). The truth of it is, there is nothing in history which is so improving to the reader as those accounts which we meet with of the deaths of eminent persons and of their behaviour in that dreadful season. I may also add that there are no parts in history which affect and please the reader in so sensible a manner. The reason I take to be this: there is no other single circumstance in the story of any person, which can possibly be the case of every one who reads it. A battle or a triumph are conjunctures in which not one man in a million is likely to be engaged: but when we see a person at the point of death, we cannot forbear being attentive to everything he says or does, because we are sure that some time or other we shall ourselves be in the same melancholy circumstances. The general, the statesman, or the philosopher, are perhaps characters which we may never act in, but the dying man is one whom, sooner or later, we shall certainly resemble. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 289. Evremond] was so pleased with gaiety of huIf the ingenious author above mentioned [St. mour in a dying man, he might have found a much nobler instance of it in our countryman Sir Thomas More. This great and learned man was famous for enlivening his ordinary discourses with wit and pleasantry; and, as Erasmus tells him in an epistle dedicatory, acted in all parts of life like a second Democritus. He died upon a point of religion, and is respected as a martyr by that side for which he suffered. That innocent mirth, which had been so conspicuous in his life, did not forsake him to the last. He maintained the same cheerfulness of heart upon the scaffold which he used to show at his table; and upon laying his head on the block, gave instances of that good humour with which he had always entertained his friends in the most ordinary occurrences. His death was of a piece with his life. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected. He did not look upon the severing his head from his body as a circumstance that ought to produce any change in the disposition of his mind; and, as he died under a fixed and settled hope of immortality, he thought any unusual degree of sor row and concern improper on such an occasion as had nothing in it which could deject or terrify him. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 349. The prospect of death is so gloomy and dismal that if it were constantly before our eyes it would embitter all the sweets of life. The gracious Author of our being hath therefore so formed us that we are capable of many pleasing sensations and reflections, and meet with so many amusements and solicitudes, as divert our thoughts from dwelling upon an evil which, by reason of its seeming distance, makes but languid impressions upon the mind. But how distant soever the time of our death may be, since it is certain that we must die, it is necessary to allot some portion of our life to consider the end of it; and it is highly convenient to fix some stated times to meditate upon the final period of our existence here. The principle of self-love, as we are men, will make us inquire what is like to become of us after our dissolu tion; and our conscience, as we are Christians, will inform us that according to the good or evil of our actions here, we shall be translated to the mansions of eternal bliss or misery. When this is seriously weighed, we must think it madness to be unprepared against the black moment; but when we reflect that perhaps that black moment may be to-night, how watchful ought we to be! ADDISON: Guardian, No. 18. A man has not time to subdue his passions, establish his soul in virtue, and come up to the perfection of his nature, before he is hurried off the stage. ADDISON. Men sometimes upon the hour of departure do speak and reason above themselves; for then the soul, beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, reasons like herself, and discourses in a strain above mortality. ADDISON. Dread of death hangs over the mere natural man, and, like the handwriting on the wall, damps all his jollity. ATTERBURY. Men, upon the near approach of death, have been roused up into such a lively sense of their guilt, such a passionate degree of concern and remorse, that if ten thousand ghosts had ap peared to them they scarce could have had a fuller conviction of their danger. ATTERBURY. Those that place their hope in another world have, in a great measure, conquered dread of death, and unreasonable love of life. ATTERBURY. Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark; nd as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. LORD BACON: Essay II., Of Death. 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 the combat of him. hath so many attendants about him that can win death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; Revenge triumphs over read, after Otho the emperor had slain himself, grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it; nay, we pity (which is the tenderest of affections) protheir sovereign, and as the truest sort of followvoked many to die out of mere compassion to ers. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness and satiety. LORD BACON: Essay II., Of Death. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over again. LORD BACON: Essay II., Of Death. embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do In expectation of a better, I can with patience often desire death. I honour any man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any one that is afraid of it. .. For a Pagan there may be some motive to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. The more we sink into the infirmities of age, the nearer we are to immortal youth. All people are young in the other world. That state is an eternal spring, ever fresh and flourishing. Now, to pass from midnight into noon on the sudden; to be decrepit one minute and sirable change. To call this dying is an abuse all spirit and activity the next, must be a deof language. JEREMY COLLIER. In death itself there can be nothing terrible, for the act of death annihilates sensation; but there are many roads to death, and some of them justly formidable, even to the bravest : but so various are the modes of going out of the world, that to be born may have been a more painful thing than to die, and to live may prove a more troublesome thing than either. COLTON: Lacon. Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console. COLTON. There is nothing, no, nothing, innocent or good, that dies and is forgotten: let us hold to that faith or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it, and play its part, through them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes, or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to the host of heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten! oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautiful would even death appear! for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves! DICKENS. Oh, it is hard to take to heart the lesson that such deaths will teach; but let no man reject it, for it is one that all must learn, and is a mighty universal truth. When death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise, in shapes of Mercy, Charity, and Love, to walk the world, and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes. In the destroyer's steps there spring up bright creations that defy his power, and his dark path becomes a way of light to heaven. DICKENS. Death comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when he comes. The ashes of an oak in a chimney are no epitaph of that, to tell me how high, or how large, that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons' graves is speechless too: it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing. As soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldst not, as of a prince whom thou couldst not, look upon, will trouble thine eyes if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the church-yard into the church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the church-yard, who will undertake to sift those again, and to pronounce, "This is the patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeoman, this the plebeian bran"? DONNE. The thought of being nothing after death is a burden insupportable to a virtuous man. DRYDEN. A wise man shall not be deprived of pleasure even when death shall summons him; forasmuch as he has attained the delightful end of the best life, departing like a guest full and well satisfied: having received life upon trust, and duly discharged that office, he acquits himself at departing. EPICURUS. He that always waits upon God is ready whensoever He calls. Neglect not to set your accounts: he is a happy man who so lives as that death at all times may find him at leisure to die. FELLTHAM. Of the great number to whom it has been my painful professional duty to have administered in the last hour of their lives, I have sometimes felt surprised that so few have appeared reluctant to go to "the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns." Many, we may easily suppose, have manifested this willingness to die from an impatience of suffering, or from that passive indifference which is sometimes the result of debility and bodily exhaustion. But I have seen those who have arrived at a fearless contemplation of the future, from faith in the doctrine which our religion teaches, Such men were not only calm and supported, but cheerful, in the hour of death; and I never quitted such a sick-chamber without a hope that my last end might be like theirs. SIR HENRY HALFORD. An event has taken place which has no parallel in the revolutions of time, the consequences of which have not room to expand themselves within a narrower sphere than an endless duration. An event has occurred the issues of which must forever baffle and elude all finite comprehensions, by concealing themselves in the depths of that abyss, of that eternity, which is the dwelling-place of Deity, where there is sufficient space for the destiny of each, among the innumerable millions of the human race, to develop itself, and without interference or confusion to sustain and carry forward its separate infinity of interest. That there is nothing hyperbolic or extravagant in these conceptions, but that they are the true sayings of God, you may learn from almost every page of the sacred oracles. For what are they, in fact, but a different mode of announcing the doctrine taught us in the following words:- What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul; or what shall he give in exROBERT HALL: change for his soul? Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte. She is gone! No longer shrinking from the winter wind, or lifting her calm pure forehead to the summer's kiss; no longer gazing with her blue and glorious eyes into a far-off sky; no longer yearning with a holy heart for heaven; no longer toiling painfully along the path, upward and upward, to the everlasting rock on which are based the walls of the city of the Most High; no longer here; she is there; gazing, seeing, knowing, loving, as the blessed only see, and know, and love. Earth has one angel less, and heaven one more, since yesterday. Already, kneeling at the throne, she has received her welcome, and is resting on the bosom of her Saviour. If human love have power to penetrate the veil (and hath it not?) then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them. N. HAWTHORNE. It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does, when the dim eye is brightening with its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when the life blood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray the very clouds that made the day dark should grow gloriously beautiful. N. HAWTHORNE. When the veil of death has been drawn between us and the objects of our regard, how quick-sighted do we become to their merits, and how bitterly do we remember words, or even looks, of unkindness which may have |