which arises from the memory of past afflictions.

We, that are very old, are better able to remember things which befell
us in our distant youth than the passages of later days. For this
reason it is that the companions of my strong and vigorous years present
themselves more immediately to me in this office of sorrow. Untimely or
unhappy deaths are what we are most apt to lament: so little are we
able to make it indifferent when a thing happens, though we know it must
happen. Thus we groan under life, and bewail those who are relieved
from it. Every object that returns to our imagination raises different
passions, according to the circumstance of their departure. Who can have
lived in an army, and in a serious hour reflect upon the many gay and
agreeable men that might long have flourished in the arts of peace, and
not join with the imprecations of the fatherless and widow on the tyrant
to whose ambition they fell sacrifices? But gallant men, who are cut oft
by the sword, move rather our veneration than our pity; and we gather
relief enough from their own contempt of death, to make it no evil,
which was approached with so much cheerfulness, and attended with so
much honour. But when we turn our thoughts from the great parts of life
on such occasions, and instead of lamenting those who stood ready to
give death to those from whom they had the fortune to receive it; I say,
when we let our thoughts wander from such noble objects, and consider
the havoc which is made among the tender and the innocent, pity enters
with an unmixed softness, and possesses all our souls at once.

Here, were there words to express such sentiments with proper
tenderness, I should record the beauty, innocence, and untimely death
of the first object my eyes ever beheld with love. The beauteous virgin!
how ignorantly did she charm, how carelessly excel! Oh, Death! thou hast
right to the bold, to the ambitious, to the high, and to the haughty;
but why this cruelty to the humble, to the meek, to the undiscerning, to
the thoughtless? Nor age, nor business, nor distress can erase the dear
image from my imagination. In the same week, I saw her dressed for a
ball, and in a shroud. How ill did the habit of death become the pretty
trifler! I still behold the smiling earth--A large train of disasters
were coming on to my memory, when my servant knocked at my closet-door,
and interrupted me with a letter, attended with a hamper of wine, of
the same sort wit