se, the gloomy pomp, the
hideousness of decay, are known to the living and the living alone. By a
too common illusion of the imagination, men picture themselves as
consciously dead,--going through the process of corruption, and aware of
it; imprisoned with the knowledge of the fact in the most hideous of
dungeons. Endeavour earnestly to erase this illusion from your mind, for
it lies at the root of the fear of death, and it is one of the worst
sides of mediaeval and of much modern teaching and art that it tends to
strengthen it. Nothing, if we truly realise it, is less real than the
grave. We should be no more concerned with the after fate of our
discarded bodies than with that of the hair which the hair-cutter has
cut off. The sooner they are resolved into their primitive elements the
better. The imagination should never be suffered to dwell upon their
decay.

Bacon has justly noticed that while death is often regarded as the
supreme evil, there is no human passion that does not become so powerful
as to lead men to despise it. It is not in the waning days of life, but
in the full strength of youth, that men, through ambition or the mere
love of excitement, fearlessly and joyously encounter its risk.
Encountered in hot blood it is seldom feared, and innumerable accounts
of shipwrecks and other accidents, and many episodes in every war, show
conclusively how calmly honour, duty, and discipline can enable men of
no extraordinary characters, virtues, or attainments, to meet it even
when it comes before them suddenly, as an inevitable fact, and without
any of that excitement which might blind their eyes. If we analyse our
own feelings on the death of those we love, we shall probably find that,
except in cases where life is prematurely shortened and much promise cut
off, pity for the dead person is rarely a marked element. The feelings
which had long been exclusively concentrated on the sufferings of the
dying man take a new course when the moment of death arrives. It is the
sudden blank; the separation from him who is dear to us; the cessation
of the long reciprocity of love and pleasure,--in a word our own
loss,--that affects us then. 'A happy release' is perhaps the phrase
most frequently heard around a death-bed. And as we look back through
the vista of a few years, and have learned to separate death more
clearly from the illness that preceded it, the sense of its essential
peacefulness and naturalness grows upon us. A v