ch
regret), I have spared, however, no pains to make myself master of the
Greek language and learning.

Inestimable, too, are the advantages of old age, if we contemplate it
in another point of view; if we consider it as delivering us from the
tyranny of lust and ambition; from the angry and contentious passions;
from every inordinate and irrational desire; in a word, as teaching us
to retire within ourselves, and look for happiness in our own bosoms.
If to these moral benefits naturally resulting from length of days be
added that sweet food of the mind which is gathered in the fields of
science, I know not any season of life that is passed more agreeably
than the learned leisure of a virtuous old age.

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

(_By Cicero._)

And now, among the different sentiments of the philosophers concerning
the consequences of our final dissolution, may I not venture to
declare my own? and the rather, as the nearer death advances towards
me, the more clearly I seem to discern its real nature.

I am well convinced, then, that my dear departed friends, your two
illustrious fathers, are so far from having ceased to live, that the
state they now enjoy can alone with propriety be called _life_. The
soul, during her confinement within this prison of the body, is doomed
by fate to undergo a severe penance; for her native seat is in heaven,
and it is with reluctance that she is forced down from those celestial
mansions into these lower regions, where all is foreign and repugnant
to her divine nature. But the gods, I am persuaded, have thus widely
disseminated immortal spirits, and clothed them with human bodies,
that there might be a race of intelligent creatures, not only to have
dominion over this, our earth, but to contemplate the host of heaven,
and imitate in their moral conduct the same beautiful order and
uniformity so conspicuous in those splendid orbs. This opinion I am
induced to embrace, not only as agreeable to the best deductions of
reason, but in just deference, also, to the authority of the noblest
and most distinguished philosophers. And I am further confirmed in my
belief of the soul's immortality by the discourse which Socrates--whom
the oracle of Apollo pronounced to be the wisest of men--held upon
this subject just before his death. In a word, when I consider the
faculties with which the human mind is endued; its amazing celerity;
its wonderful power in recollecting past events, and sagacity i