ear Crasweller," I rejoined, "it was out of the question so to
arrange the law as to vary the term to suit the peculiarities of one
man or another."

"But in a change of such terrible severity you should have suited the
eldest."

This was dreadful to me,--that he, the first to receive at the hands
of his country the great honour intended for him,--that he should
have already allowed his mind to have rebelled against it! If he, who
had once been so keen a supporter of the Fixed Period, now turned
round and opposed it, how could others who should follow be expected
to yield themselves up in a fitting frame of mind? And then I
spoke my thoughts freely to him. "Are you afraid of departure?" I
said,--"afraid of that which must come; afraid to meet as a friend
that which you must meet so soon as friend or enemy?" I paused; but
he sat looking at me without reply. "To fear departure;--must it not
be the greatest evil of all our life, if it be necessary? Can God
have brought us into the world, intending us so to leave it that the
very act of doing so shall be regarded by us as a curse so terrible
as to neutralise all the blessings of our existence? Can it be that
He who created us should have intended that we should so regard our
dismissal from the world? The teachers of religion have endeavoured
to reconcile us to it, and have, in their vain zeal, endeavoured to
effect it by picturing to our imaginations a hell-fire into which
ninety-nine must fall; while one shall be allowed to escape to a
heaven, which is hardly made more alluring to us! Is that the way to
make a man comfortable at the prospect of leaving this world? But it
is necessary to our dignity as men that we shall find the mode of
doing so. To lie quivering and quaking on my bed at the expectation
of the Black Angel of Death, does not suit my manhood,--which would
fear nothing;--which does not, and shall not, stand in awe of aught
but my own sins. How best shall we prepare ourselves for the day
which we know cannot be avoided? That is the question which I have
ever been asking myself,--which you and I have asked ourselves, and
which I thought we had answered. Let us turn the inevitable into
that which shall in itself be esteemed a glory to us. Let us teach
the world so to look forward with longing eyes, and not with a faint
heart. I had thought to have touched some few, not by the eloquence
of my words, but by the energy of my thoughts; and you, oh my friend,
have