s, derived from long familiarity with the English mail,
as developed in the former paper; impressions, for instance, of animal
beauty and power, of rapid motion, at that time unprecedented, of
connection with the government and public business of a great nation, but,
above all, of connection with the national victories at an unexampled
crisis,--the mail being the privileged organ for publishing and dispersing
all news of that kind. From this function of the mail, arises naturally the
introduction of Waterloo into the fourth variation of the Fogue; for the
mail itself having been carried into the dreams by the incident in the
Vision, naturally all the accessory circumstances of pomp and grandeur
investing this national carriage followed in the train of the principal
image.]

What is to be thought of sudden death? It is remarkable that, in different
conditions of society it has been variously regarded as the consummation of
an earthly career most fervently to be desired, and, on the other hand,
as that consummation which is most of all to be deprecated. Caesar the
Dictator, at his last dinner party, (_coena_,) and the very evening before
his assassination, being questioned as to the mode of death which, in _his_
opinion, might seem the most eligible, replied--"That which should be most
sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when
breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character for
the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very
van of horrors. "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and
famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,--_Good Lord, deliver
us_." Sudden death is here made to crown the climax in a grand ascent of
calamities; it is the last of curses; and yet, by the noblest of Romans,
it was treated as the first of blessings. In that difference, most readers
will see little more than the difference between Christianity and Paganism.
But there I hesitate. The Christian church may be right in its estimate of
sudden death; and it is a natural feeling, though after all it may also
be an infirm one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life--as that which
_seems_ most reconcilable with meditation, with penitential retrospects,
and with the humilities of farewell prayer. There does not, however, occur
to me any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition of the
English Litany. It seems rather a petition indulged t