and vices. His pleasures were restrained by no ties of relationship, friendship, or decency. He was a great lover of gaming; in his younger years he was unsuccessful, but he afterwards became more artful, and at his death he was supposed to have acquired 30,000l. by play. His constitution was feeble, and by his vices so enervated, that he died an old man at the age of 35. He was, like his father, a believer in ghosts, and many stories are told, with considerable confidence, which have relation to his death. About three days before he died, a female figure, with a bird on her hand,* appeared to him, as he imagined, and told him he should die in three days. The day of this supposed appearance he went to the House of Lords, and spoke with great earnestness on some business then in agitation. The next day he went to a villa he had at Epsom, apparently as well as he had been some time before. The succeeding day he continued there, and was in as good health and spirits as usual, though the apparition still hung upon his mind. He spent the evening in company with the Miss Amphletts, Admiral Wolseley, Earl Fortescue, and some other persons: he seemed perfectly well, and pulling out his watch, said jocularly, it was ten o'clock, and if he lived two hours, he should jockey the ghost. In about an hour, he retired to his chamber, and ordered his valet to bring his powder of rhubarb, which he frequently took at night. His servant brought it, and forgetting to bring a spoon was going to stir it with a key; upon which his Lordship called him a dirty fellow, and bid him fetch a spoon. Accordingly, he went out, and returning in a few minutes, found his Lordship in the agonies of death.

DEATH OF ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON.

Bishop Burnet records of the saintly Robert Leighton:

He often used to say that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an Inn. It looked like a Pilgrim's going Home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it. He added that the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired; for he died at the Bell inn, in Warwick-lane.

Dr. Fall, who was well acquainted with Leighton, after a glowing eulogy on his holy life and "heavenly converse," proceeds:

Such a life, we may easily persuade ourselves, must make the thought of Death not only tolerable but desirable. Accordingly, it had this noble effect upon him. In a paper left under his own hand (since lost) he bespeaks that day in a most glorious and triumphant manner: his Expressions seem rapturous and ecstatic, as though his Wishes and Desires

* In Devonshire the appearance of a white-breasted bird has long been considered an omen of death. This belief has been traced to a circumstance stated to have happened to one of the Oxenham family in that county, and related by Howel, in his Familiar Letters; wherein is the following monumental inscription: "Here lies John Oxenham, a goodly young man, in whose chamber, as he was struggling with the pangs of death, a bird, with a white breast, was seen fluttering about his bed, and so vanished." A similar circumstance is related of the death of his sister Mary, and two or three others of the family.

Old Age and Death.

133

had anticipated the real and solemn celebration of his Nuptials with the Lamb of God. . . . He sometimes expressed his desire of not being troublesome to his friends at his Death; and God gratified to the full his modest humble choice: he dying at an Inn in his sleep. . So kind and condescending a Master do we serve, who not only enriches the souls of his faithful servants with His best Treasures, but often indulges them in lesser matters, and giveth to his beloved, even in their sleep.

Diodorus tells us that the Egyptians used to style the dwellings of the living "Inns," regarding the Life as the Journey of a Traveller towards his home. Cowley has a similar thought in one of his Pindaric Odes, of which the following is the first stanza:

LIFE.

Nascentes morimur.-Manil.

We're ill by those Grammarians us'd,
We are abused by Words, grossly abused;
From the Maternal Tomb

To the Grave's fruitful Womb,
We call here Life; but Life's a Name
That nothing here can truly claim:

This wretched Inn, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our Dwelling-place;

We call one Step a Race;

But Angels in their full enlightened state,
Angels who Live, and know what 'tis to Be,

Who all the nonsense of our Language see,

Who speak Things, and our Words (their ill-drawn Pictures) scorn: When we by a foolish Figure say

Behold an old Man dead! then they

Speak properly, and cry, "Behold a Man-child born!”

OLD AGE AND DEATH.

M. Richerand, in his Elements of Physiology, has this pathetic picture of the closing scene:

New impressions are now less easily made, and the motions necessary to the operation of the understanding are performed with difficulty. Hence in decrepitude, man returns, as far as relates to his intellectual faculties, to a state of second childhood, limited to certain recollections which are at first confused, and at last completely lost, incapable of judgment or will, or of new impressions.

The close of life is marked by phenomena similar to those with which it began. The circulation first manifested itself, and ceases last. The right auricle is the first to pulsate, and in death the last to retain its motion.

The following is the order in which the intellectual faculties cease and are decomposed-I am not here speaking of the immortal soul, of that divine emanation which outlives matter, and freed from our perishable part, returns to the Almighty; I am speaking merely of those intellectual faculties which are common to man, and to those animals which, like him, are provided with a brain. Reason, the exclusive faculty of man, first forsakes him. He begins by losing the faculty of associating judgments, and then of comparing, bringing together, and of connecting, a number of ideas, so as to judge of their relation. The patient is then

said to have lost his consciousness, or to be delirious. This delirium has generally for its subject the ideas that are most familiar to the patient, and his prevailing passion is easily recognised. The miser talks, in the most indiscreet manner, of his hidden treasure; the unbeliever dies haunted by religious apprehensions. Sweet recollections of a distant native land! then it is that ye return with your all-powerful energy and delight.

At last, he ceases to feel; but his senses vanish in succession, and in a determinate order. The taste and smell cease to give any sign of existence; the eyes become obscured by a dark and gloomy cloud; but the ear is yet sensible to sound and noise; and no doubt, it was on this account that the Ancients, to ascertain that death had really taken place, were in the habit of calling loudly to the deceased.

A dying man, though no longer capable of smelling, tasting, hearing, and seeing, still retains the sense of touch; he tosses about in his bed, moves his arms in various directions, and is perpetually changing his posture.

DEATH AT WILL.

An instance of this kind, which may also be termed voluntary trance, is quoted by Mrs. Crowe, in her Nightside of Nature.

Doctor Cheyne, the Scottish physician, who died in 1742, relates the case of Colonel Townshend, who could, to all appearance, die whenever he pleased: his heart ceased to beat, there was no perceptible respiration, and his whole frame became cold and rigid as death itself; the features being shrunk and colourless, and the eyes glazed and ghastly. He would continue in this state for several hours, and then gradually revive; but the revival does not appear to have been an effort of will, or rather, we are not informed whether it was so or not. The Doctor, who attended the Colonel, states that his patient said, he could "die or expire when he pleased;" and yet, by an effort, or somehow, he could come to life again. He performed the experiment in the presence of three medical men; one of whom kept his hand on his heart, another held his wrist, and the third placed a looking-glass before his lips: and they found that all traces of respiration and pulsation gradually ceased, insomuch that after consulting about his condition for some time, they were leaving the room, persuaded that he was really dead, when signs of life appeared, and he slowly revived. He did not die while repeating the experiment, as has been sometimes asserted.

SLEEP AND DEATH.*
*

Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have corrected it; for those noctambulos and night walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses.

* From Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, Part II. Sect. xii.

We must, therefore, say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel; though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them.

We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. 'Tis indeed a part of life that best expresses death; for every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles, therefore, that slew his soldier, was a merciful executioner: 'tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented; I wonder (says Sir T. Browne) the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death. In fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God:

The night is come, like to the day;
Depart not thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of thy light.
Keep still in my horizon; for to me
The sun makes not the day, but thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;
Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob's temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance;
Make my sleep a holy trance:
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought.
And with as active vigour run
My course as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death;-0 make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die!
And as gently lay my head
On my grave as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with thee.
And thus assur'd, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.

These are my drowsy days; in vain

I do now wake to sleep again:

O come that hour, when I shall never

Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum

than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in

security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.

DOES THE SOUL SLEEP ?

The Cartesian doctrine, that the Soul never sleeps, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to test. If we imagine that the soul has need of rest, then we must admit that sleep will be found in the next world, as in this. This, however, does not accord with our ideas of an immortal spirit, which has thoughts and sensations, which we on earth apply to mental conditions which presuppose the action of the human brain; and our present existence furnishes us with no idea of the action of the soul without the action of the brain.

CONTRITION OF THE ANCIENTS AT THE POINT OF DEATH.

Diogenes Laertius relates of the atheistic philosopher, Bion, that on his deathbed he changed his opinion, and repented of the sins he had committed against God. The notion of penitence for offences against the gods scarcely ever presents itself in polytheism. Their offerings and prayers had regard to the conciliation of the deities, with a view to some prospective temporal benefit; for spiritual or eternal benefits do not seem at all to have occupied the heathen mind. Even the concluding scene of Socrates, depicted by Xenophon and Plato, leaves the result arrived at by Cicero, that philosophy can reckon a future state of rewards and punishments, only among the probabilia. The cultivated Greek, according to Tholuck, believed in no future state: as for example, Polybius, Pausanias, and Simonides. The second Alcibiades (of Plato) is designed to show that prayer itself should be seldom, if at all, addressed to the gods, lest a person should unconsciously pray for great evils upon himself, whilst thinking that he prays for good; and lest the gods should not happen to be in a disposition to grant what he happens to pray for.

Particular prayers, as for rain, are objected to by Marcus Antoninus; and Socrates prayed simply for what was good, leaving the gods to decide, as knowing better than himself what was or was not for his good. Some of the philosophers decided not to pray at all. (See Tholuck on Heathenism.)—J. T. Buckton; Notes and Queries, 2d S., No. 112.

Some Christians of the present day have not, in this respect, disdained to follow the practices of the Heathens. In the wet autumn of 1860, prayers for fine weather were objected to by certain correspondents of the newspapers of the day, as had been in the previous year prayers for rain.