t; and, therefore, a minde mixt
and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the sadness of _death_.
But above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is _Nunc Dimittis_,
when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this
also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envie."
[2]

These sentences of the great essayists are brave and ineffectual as
Leonidas and his Greeks. Death cares very little for sarcasm or trope;
hurl at him a javelin or a rose, it is all one. We build around
ourselves ramparts of stoical maxims, edifying to witness, but when the
terror comes these yield as the knots of river flags to the shoulder of
Behemoth.

Death is terrible only in presence. When distant, or supposed to be
distant, we can call him hard or tender names, nay, even poke our poor
fun at him. _Mr. Punch_, on one occasion, when he wished to ridicule
the useful-information leanings of a certain periodical publication,
quoted from its pages the sentence, "Man is mortal," and people were
found to grin broadly over the exquisite stroke of humour. Certainly
the words, and the fact they contain, are trite enough. Utter the
sentence gravely in any company, and you are certain to provoke
laughter. And yet some subtile recognition of the fact of death runs
constantly through the warp and woof of the most ordinary human
existence. And this recognition does not always terrify. The spectre
has the most cunning disguises, and often when near us we are unaware
of the fact of proximity. Unsuspected, this idea of death lurks in the
sweetness of music; it has something to do with the pleasures with
which we behold the vapours of morning; it comes between the passionate
lips of lovers; it lives in the thrill of kisses. "An inch deeper, and
you will find the emperor." Probe joy to its last fibre, and you will
find death. And it is the most merciful of all the merciful provisions
of nature, that a haunting sense of insecurity should deepen the
enjoyment of what we have secured; that the pleasure of our warm human
day and its activities should to some extent arise from a vague
consciousness of the waste night which environs it, in which no arm is
raised, in which no voice is ever heard. Death is the ugly fact which
nature has to hide, and she hides it well. Human life were otherwise
an impossibility. The pantomime runs on merrily enough; but when once
Harlequin lifts his vizor, Columbine disappears