he galley,"
an ordinary saying of his. Another, whom at the point of death his
friends had laid upon a bed of straw before the fire, the physician
asking him where his pain lay: "Betwixt the bench and the fire," said he,
and the priest, to give him extreme unction, groping for his feet which
his pain had made him pull up to him: "You will find them," said he, "at
the end of my legs." To one who being present exhorted him to recommend
himself to God: "Why, who goes thither?" said he; and the other
replying: "It will presently be yourself, if it be His good pleasure."
"Shall I be sure to be there by to-morrow night?" said he. "Do, but
recommend yourself to Him," said the other, "and you will soon be there."
"I were best then," said he, "to carry my recommendations myself."

In the kingdom of Narsingah to this day the wives of their priests are
buried alive with the bodies of their husbands; all other wives are burnt
at their husbands' funerals, which they not only firmly but cheerfully
undergo. At the death of their king, his wives and concubines, his
favourites, all his officers, and domestic servants, who make up a whole
people, present themselves so gaily to the fire where his body is burnt,
that they seem to take it for a singular honour to accompany their master
in death. During our late wars of Milan, where there happened so many
takings and retakings of towns, the people, impatient of so many changes
of fortune, took such a resolution to die, that I have heard my father
say he there saw a list taken of five-and-twenty masters of families who
made themselves away in one week's time: an incident somewhat resembling
that of the Xanthians, who being besieged by Brutus, fell--men, women,
and children--into such a furious appetite of dying, that nothing can be
done to evade death which they did not to avoid life; insomuch that
Brutus had much difficulty in saving a very small number.--["Only fifty
were saved."--Plutarch, Life of Brutus, c. 8.]

Every opinion is of force enough to cause itself to be espoused at the
expense of life. The first article of that valiant oath that Greece took
and observed in the Median war, was that every one should sooner exchange
life for death, than their own laws for those of Persia. What a world of
people do we see in the wars betwixt the Turks and the Greeks, rather
embrace a cruel death than uncircumcise themselves to admit of baptism?
An example of which no sort of religion is i