hee, O Lord, thine own Son, who already has given the
pledge of love, enclosed in this thin emblem. Turn on him thine
eyes: ah! behold whom I offer to thee, and then desist, O Lord! if
thou canst desist from mercy."

"The muse that has attended my course," says the dying Gleim in a letter
to Klopstock, "still hovers round my steps to the very verge of the
grave." A collection of lyrical poems, entitled "Last Hours," composed
by old Gleim on his death-bed, was intended to be published. The death
of Klopstock was one of the most poetical: in this poet's "Messiah," he
had made the death of Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, a picture
of the death of the Just; and on his own death-bed he was heard
repeating, with an expiring voice, his own verses on Mary; he was
exhorting himself to die by the accents of his own harp, the sublimities
of his own muse! The same song of Mary was read at the public funeral of
Klopstock.

Chatelar, a French gentleman, beheaded in Scotland for having loved the
queen, and even for having attempted her honour, Brantome says, would
not have any other viaticum than a poem of Ronsard. When he ascended the
scaffold he took the hymns of this poet, and for his consolation read
that on death, which our old critic says is well adapted to conquer its
fear.

When the Marquis of Montrose was condemned by his judges to have his
limbs nailed to the gates of four cities, the brave soldier said that
"he was sorry he had not limbs sufficient to be nailed to all the gates
of the cities in Europe, as monuments of his loyalty." As he proceeded
to his execution, he put this thought into verse.

Philip Strozzi, imprisoned by Cosmo the First, Great Duke of Tuscany,
was apprehensive of the danger to which he might expose his friends who
had joined in his conspiracy against the duke, from the confessions
which the rack might extort from him. Having attempted every exertion
for the liberty of his country, he considered it as no crime therefore
to die. He resolved on suicide. With the point of the sword, with which
he killed himself, he cut out on the mantel-piece of the chimney this
verse of Virgil:--

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.
Rise some avenger from our blood!

I can never repeat without a strong emotion the following stanzas, begun
by Andre Chenier, in the dreadful period of the French revolution. He
was waiting for his turn to be dragged to the guillotine, when he
com