to be re-edified. I should like to
see some prospect of good to mankind, such as my life began with. I
should like to leave some sterling work behind me. I should like to have
some friendly hand to consign me to the grave. On these conditions I
am ready, if not willing, to depart. I shall then write on my
tomb--GRATEFUL AND CONTENTED! But I have thought and suffered too much
to be willing to have thought and suffered in vain.--In looking back, it
sometimes appears to me as if I had in a manner slept out my life in a
dream or shadow on the side of the hill of knowledge, where I have fed
on books, on thoughts, on pictures, and only heard in half-murmurs the
trampling of busy feet, or the noises of the throng below. Waked out
of this dim, twilight existence, and startled with the passing scene, I
have felt a wish to descend to the world of realities, and join in the
chase. But I fear too late, and that I had better return to my bookish
chimeras and indolence once more! _Zanetto, lascia le donne, et studia
la matematica._ I will think of it.

It is not wonderful that the contemplation and fear of death become more
familiar to us as we approach nearer to it: that life seems to ebb with
the decay of blood and youthful spirits; and that as we find everything
about us subject to chance and change, as our strength and beauty die,
as our hopes and passions, our friends and our affections leave us, we
begin by degrees to feel ourselves mortal!

I have never seen death but once, and that was in an infant. It is years
ago. The look was calm and placid, and the face was fair and firm. It
was as if a waxen image had been laid out in the coffin, and strewed
with innocent flowers. It was not like death, but more like an image
of life! No breath moved the lips, no pulse stirred, no sight or sound
would enter those eyes or ears more. While I looked at it, I saw no pain
was there; it seemed to smile at the short pang of life which was over:
but I could not bear the coffin-lid to be closed--it seemed to stifle
me; and still as the nettles wave in a corner of the churchyard over
his little grave, the welcome breeze helps to refresh me, and ease the
tightness at my breast!

An ivory or marble image, like Chantry's monument of the two children,
is contemplated with pure delight. Why do we not grieve and fret that
the marble is not alive, or fancy that it has a shortness of breath? It
never was alive; and it is the difficulty of making the t