would wrest her victory from
the grave turn to a study of the Past, where all is dead yet still
lives, and they will find that the horror of life's cessation is
materially lessened. To those who are familiar with the course of
history, Death seems, to some extent, but the happy solution of the
dilemma of life. So many men have welcomed its coming that one begins to
feel that it cannot be so very terrible. Of the death of a certain
Pharaoh an ancient Egyptian wrote: "He goes to heaven like the hawks,
and his feathers are like those of the geese; he rushes at heaven like a
crane, he kisses heaven like the falcon, he leaps to heaven like the
locust"; and we who read these words can feel that to rush eagerly at
heaven like the crane would be a mighty fine ending of the pother.
Archaeology, and especially Egyptology, in this respect is a bulwark to
those who find the faith of their fathers wavering; for, after much
study, the triumphant assertion which is so often found in Egyptian
tombs--"Thou dost not come dead to thy sepulchre, thou comest
living"--begins to take hold of the imagination. Death has been the
parent of so much goodness, dying men have cut such a dash, that one
looks at it with an awakening interest. Even if the sense of the
misfortune of death is uppermost in an archaeologist's mind, he may find
not a little comfort in having before him the example of so many good,
men, who, in their hour, have faced that great calamity with squared
shoulders.

"When Death comes," says a certain sage of ancient Egypt, "it seizes the
babe that is on the breast of its mother as well as he that has become
an old man. When thy messenger comes to carry thee away, be thou found
by him _ready_." Why, here is our chance; here is the opportunity for
that flourish which modesty, throughout our life, has forbidden to us!
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, when the time came for him to lay his
head upon the block, bade the executioner smite it off with three
strokes as a courtesy to the Holy Trinity. King Charles the Second, as
he lay upon his death-bed, apologised to those who stood around him for
"being an unconscionable time adying." The story is familiar of
Napoleon's aide-de-camp, who, when he had been asked whether he were
wounded, replied, "Not wounded: killed," and thereupon expired. The Past
is full of such incidents; and so inspiring are they that Death comes to
be regarded as a most stirring adventure. The archaeologist, too,