olour and
articulation, are always cowards. No philosophy will teach them
bravery in the stern presence. And yet there are considerations which
rob death of its ghastliness, and help to reconcile us to it. The
thoughtful happiness of a human being is complex, and in certain moved
moments, which, after they have gone, we can recognise to have been our
happiest, some subtle thought of death has been curiously intermixed.
And this subtle intermixture it is which gives the happy moment its
character--which makes the difference between the gladness of a child,
resident in mere animal health and impulse, and too volatile to be
remembered, and the serious joy of a man, which looks before and after,
and takes in both this world and the next. Speaking broadly, it may be
said that it is from some obscure recognition of the fact of death that
life draws its final sweetness. An obscure, haunting recognition, of
course; for if more than that, if the thought becomes palpable,
defined, and present, it swallows up everything. The howling of the
winter wind outside increases the warm satisfaction of a man in bed;
but this satisfaction is succeeded by quite another feeling when the
wind grows into a tempest, and threatens to blow the house down. And
this remote recognition of death may exist almost constantly in a man's
mind, and give to his life keener zest and relish. His lights may burn
the brighter for it, and his wines taste sweeter. For it is on the
tapestry or a dim ground that the figures come out in the boldest
relief and the brightest colour.

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed,
clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It
is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death. The brutes die
even as we; but it is our knowledge that we have to die that makes us
human. If nature cunningly hides death, and so permits us to play out
our little games, it is easily seen that our knowing it to be
inevitable, that to every one of us it will come one day or another, is
a wonderful spur to action. We really do work while it is called
to-day, because the night cometh when no man can work. We may not
expect it soon--it may not have sent us a single _avant-courier_--yet
we all know that every day brings it nearer. On the supposition that
we were to live here always, there would be little inducement to
exertion. But, having some work at heart, the knowledge that we may