, however, is not the spirit in which books are often read in these
days. We have an appetite for useful information, and an appetite for
frivolous sentiment or purely poetical musing. We cannot combine the two
after the quaint fashion of the old physician. And therefore these
charming writings have ceased to suit our modern taste; and Sir Thomas
is already passing under that shadow of mortality which obscures all,
even the greatest, reputations, and with which no one has dwelt more
pathetically or graphically than himself.

If we are disposed to complain, Sir Thomas shall himself supply the
answer, in a passage from the 'Hydriotaphia,' which, though described by
Hallam as the best written of his treatises, is not to my taste so
attractive as the 'Religio Medici.' The concluding chapter, however, is
in his best style, and here are some of his reflections on posthumous
fame. The end of the world, he says, is approaching, and 'Charles V. can
never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.' 'And, therefore,
restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories with present
considerations seems a vanity out of date, and a superannuated piece of
folly. We cannot hope to live as long in our names as some have done in
their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis
too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or
time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by
monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot
hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day,
were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained
in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such
imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of
futurity, are naturally constituted into thoughts of the next world, and
cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which
maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment.'

If the argument has now been vulgarised in the hands of Dr. Cumming and
his like, the language and the sentiment are worthy of any of our
greatest masters.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Ross, for example, urges that the invisibility of the phoenix is
sufficiently accounted for by the natural desire of a unique animal to
keep out of harm's way.

[6] Mr. Lowell, in 'Shakspeare Once More,' 'Among My Books.'

_JONATHAN EDWARDS_[7]

Two of the ablest think