ransition from
life to death, the struggle between the two in our imagination, that
confounds their properties painfully together, and makes us conceive
that the infant that is but just dead, still wants to breathe, to enjoy,
and look about it, and is prevented by the icy hand of death, locking up
its faculties and benumbing its senses; so that, if it could, it
would complain of its own hard state. Perhaps religious considerations
reconcile the mind to this change sooner than any others, by
representing the spirit as fled to another sphere, and leaving the body
behind it. So in reflecting on death generally, we mix up the idea of
life with it, and thus make it the ghastly monster it is. We think, how
we should feel, not how the dead feel.

Still from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires!

There is an admirable passage on this subject in Tucker's _Light
of Nature Pursued_, which I shall transcribe, as by much the best
illustration I can offer of it.

'The melancholy appearance of a lifeless body, the mansion provided
for it to inhabit, dark, cold, close and solitary, are shocking to the
imagination; but it is to the imagination only, not the understanding;
for whoever consults this faculty will see at first glance, that there
is nothing dismal in all these circumstances: if the corpse were kept
wrapped up in a warm bed, with a roasting fire in the chamber, it would
feel no comfortable warmth therefrom; were store of tapers lighted up as
soon as day shuts in, it would see no objects to divert it; were it left
at large it would have no liberty, nor if surrounded with company would
be cheered thereby; neither are the distorted features expressions of
pain, uneasiness, or distress. This every one knows, and will readily
allow upon being suggested, yet still cannot behold, nor even cast a
thought upon those objects without shuddering; for knowing that a
living person must suffer grievously under such appearances, they become
habitually formidable to the mind, and strike a mechanical horror, which
is increased by the customs of the world around us.'

There is usually one pang added voluntarily and unnecessarily to the
fear of death, by our affecting to compassionate the loss which others
will have in us. If that were all, we might reasonably set our minds at
rest. The pathetic exhortation on country tombstones, 'Grieve not for
me, my wife and children dear,' etc., is for the most