ing incontinently upon their laughter.

"This hasteth to be; that other to have been: of that which now cometh
to be, even now somewhat hath been extinguished. And wilt thou make
thy treasure of any one of these things? It were as if one set his
love upon the swallow, as it passeth out of sight through the air!

"Bethink thee often, in all contentions public and private, of those
whom men have remembered by reason of their anger and vehement
spirit--those famous rages, and the occasions of them--the great
fortunes, and misfortunes, of men's strife of old. What are they all
now, and the dust of their battles? Dust [206] and ashes indeed; a
fable, a mythus, or not so much as that. Yes! keep those before thine
eyes who took this or that, the like of which happeneth to thee, so
hardly; were so querulous, so agitated. And where again are they?
Wouldst thou have it not otherwise with thee?

Consider how quickly all things vanish away--their bodily structure
into the general substance; the very memory of them into that great
gulf and abysm of past thoughts. Ah! 'tis on a tiny space of earth
thou art creeping through life--a pigmy soul carrying a dead body to
its grave.

"Let death put thee upon the consideration both of thy body and thy
soul: what an atom of all matter hath been distributed to thee; what a
little particle of the universal mind. Turn thy body about, and
consider what thing it is, and that which old age, and lust, and the
languor of disease can make of it. Or come to its substantial and
causal qualities, its very type: contemplate that in itself, apart from
the accidents of matter, and then measure also the span of time for
which the nature of things, at the longest, will maintain that special
type. Nay! in the very principles and first constituents of things
corruption hath its part--so much dust, humour, stench, and scraps of
bone! Consider that thy marbles are but the earth's callosities, thy
gold and silver its faeces; this silken robe but a worm's bedding, and
thy [207] purple an unclean fish. Ah! and thy life's breath is not
otherwise, as it passeth out of matters like these, into the like of
them again.

"For the one soul in things, taking matter like wax in the hands,
moulds and remoulds--how hastily!--beast, and plant, and the babe, in
turn: and that which dieth hath not slipped out of the order of nature,
but, remaining therein, hath also its changes there, disparting into
those eleme