cerers and witches, &c., whom
he condemns to the flames! See his "Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593.

[125] Wood's "Inquiry on Homer," p. 153.

[126] Bodin's "Commonweal," translated by R. Knolles, p. 148. 1606.

[127] Burke's Works, vol. i. 288.

[128] The modern word _cheater_ is traced by some authors to this
term, which soon became odious to the populace.

[129] Daines Barrington, in "Observations on the Statutes," gives
the marginal _note_ of Buck as the _words_ of the duke; they
certainly served his purpose to amuse, better than the veracious
ones; but we expect from a grave antiquary inviolable authenticity.
The duke is made by Barrington a sort of wit, but the pithy
quaintness is Buck's.

[130] These "Private Instructions to the Commissioners for the
General Loan" may be found in Rushworth, i. 418.

THE BOOK OF DEATH.

Montaigne was fond of reading minute accounts of the deaths of remarkable
persons; and, in the simplicity of his heart, old Montaigne wished to be
learned enough to form a collection of these deaths, to observe "their
words, their actions, and what sort of countenance they put upon it." He
seems to have been a little over curious about deaths, in reference, no
doubt, to his own, in which he was certainly deceived; for we are told
that he did not die as he had promised himself,--expiring in the
adoration of the mass; or, as his preceptor Buchanan would have called
it, in "the act of rank idolatry."

I have been told of a privately printed volume, under the singular title
of "The Book of Death," where an _amateur_ has compiled the pious
memorials of many of our eminent men in their last moments: and it may
form a companion-piece to the little volume on "Les grands hommes qui
sont morts en plaisantant." This work, I fear, must be monotonous; the
deaths of the righteous must resemble each other; the learned and the
eloquent can only receive in silence that hope which awaits "the
covenant of the grave." But this volume will not establish any decisive
principle, since the just and the religious have not always encountered
death with indifference, nor even in a fit composure of mind.

The functions of the mind are connected with those of the body. On a
death-bed a fortnight's disease may reduce the firmest to a most
wretched state; while, on the contrary, the soul struggles, as it were
in torture, in a robust frame. Nani, the Venetian historian