Brunton's, and then as hastily averted them; the blood which had rushed to her face ebbed as quickly as it mounted, and left her deadly pale. Brunton advanced towards her.

"I will not," he said, in a low voice, "affect to misunderstand you. You offer me the life I saved."

She dropped into a chair, and covering her face, burst into an agony of

tears.

Brunton took one of her hands.

"There is no cause for grief," he continued, in the same subdued tone. "Margaret!"

She started her whole frame heaving with emotion.

"Margaret!" he whispered, "why did I save your life? If I had not loved you-the very instant I first beheld you—I might have left you to

another."

"It is true, then, true, what I durst not hope," she exclaimed, "and no mere impulse of compassion! Will Alice believe in her own prediction? Oh, Richard! Richard!"

Did he dare, the dissembler, the double traitor, to press her to his bosom, to shower kisses on her brow, to utter the fondest words? Yes, he dared all, for he said within himself, "I will bend this nature to my own purpose. She loves me enough to be my slave."

And at once he made the first move in controlling her will.

"Margaret," he said, "but for that which has chanced-so happilyso unexpectedly-you would have learnt some of the particulars of my life when I spoke of acquiring fortune. It was my intention to have told you under what circumstances my career began, how far I am dependent, and how far free; but your own impulsive nature has caused you, in part, to anticipate an explanation which, when made, would have left my fate in your hands. Yes, such a wife as you described is necessary to my success; but that is not all. I am involved by considerations of vast weight in affairs of which I am not the absolute disposer, and our engagementit is one, dearest?-must for the present remain a secret; a secret from all-even from your child and pupil, Alice Travers. Her assistance in carrying out our plans-ours, Margaret !-was that, I know, upon which you reckoned, and it must not fail us. Win her regard for me; for your sake she will freely give it ;-but until it is wholly won, breathe not a syllable of the reason why you plead. A premature disclosure would cause the failure of all my combinations. You promise this, Margaret?" "Anything, everything, Richard, after what you have done for me!" As Brunton passed through the old tesselated hall, his eye fell upon The Queen of Sheba.

"That ship," he muttered, "sailed on many a stormy sea, but she always got safely into port. My ventures are not less perilous than hers. Let me accept the omen. I will back myself against any one I know for improving an occasion."

THANATOS ATHANATOS.

A MEDLEY.

VIII.

AVOIDING THE THOUGHT OF DEATH:-LOUIS XI.-MAXIMILIAN I.-HENRI IV. -LATIN PERIPHRASIS-LADY GETHIN-LA ROCHEFOUCAULD-DR. JOHNSONHOOD-LAMB-JUSTICE SHALLOW-GODFREY BERTRAM-CARLYLE ON THE METHOD OF NATURE.

After I saw him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. How now, Sir John? quoth I: what, man! be of good cheer. So 'a cried out-God, God, God, three or four times: now I, to comfort him, bid him, 'a should not think of God; I hoped, there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet.-King Henry V., Act II. Sc. 3.

Les hommes n'ayant pu guérir la mort, la misère, l'ignorance, se sont avisés, pour se rendre heureux, de ne point y penser.-Pensées de Pascal, I. VII. § 4. Tout ce que je connais, c'est que je dois bientôt mourir; mais ce que j'ignore le plus, c'est cette mort même que je ne saurais éviter.—Ibid. II. § 2.

Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixement.-Maximes de La Rochefoucauld.

"He

NEVER, says Philip de Comines, of Louis XI., never was man more fearful of death, nor used more means to keep it at a distance. had, all his life long, commanded and requested his servants, and me among the rest, that whenever we saw him in any danger of death, we should not tell him of it, but merely admonish him to confess himself, without ever mentioning that cruel and shocking word Death; for he did not believe he could ever endure to hear so cruel a sentence."

Crowned heads more than one or two have shared in the repugnance of uncrowned heads to think of One who is himself too a King, the King of Terrors. They cannot bear to think that

-within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,

Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp.

Like common men, and often still more absolutely, they taboo the subject altogether. When Henri Quatre was going over the articles of the Romish faith, with a view to his abjuration of the Reformed, he stopped abruptly at the section on prayers for the dead. "Let us talk of something else," he said; "I have no taste for death." There might be no royal road to escape it; but his majesty would follow out his own royal road of avoiding the discussion of it. So, parlons d'autre chose. Anything but that.

Old Gerard Leigh, in his "Accidence of Armorie," tells us, that "the great Maximilian the emperor came to a monastery in high Almaine, the monks whereof had caused to be curiously painted the charnel of a man, which they termed Death. When that well-learned emperor had beholden it awhile, he called unto him his painter, commanded him to blot the skeleton out, and to paint therein the image of a fool. Wherewith the abbot, humbly beseeching him to the contrary, said, 'It was a good remembrance. Nay,' quoth the emperor, as vermin that annoyeth

VOL. XLII.

D

man's body comes unlooked for, so doth death, which here is but a feigned image, and life is a certain thing, if we know how to deserve it.' The emperor found any such "good remembrance" de trop, and probably set down that "good remembrancer," the abbot himself, as a troublesome fellow, whom (together with his monastery) 'twere as well, with all convenient speed, to forget.

His philosophy in this respect was that of the mass of mankind. We do not "consider," but systematically ignore our latter end. That death of which we all know so well, is, as Chalmers says, scarcely ever in our thoughts with as cheerful and assured footsteps do we tread the face of this world, as if it were the scene of our immortality-and the latter end of our life is totally unseen in the obscure and undefined distance at which we have placed it, in the field of our contemplations. As in Pope's couplet

The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear,
Death still draws nearer, never seeming near.

This, Pope declares to be, a "great standing miracle." Chalmers again remarks, that it argues for the strength of the recoil with which nature shrinks from the thought of its own dissolution, that so many and repeated demonstrations pass unheeded-and that, walking though we be, over the accumulated ruins of so many generations, we nevertheless will talk as merrily, and lift up our heads as securely, as though beings who were to live for ever.

The Romans, says Montaigne, "by reason that this poor syllable Death was observed to be so harsh to the ears of the people, and the sound so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing bluntly, 'Such a one is dead,'-to say, 'Such a one has lived,' or, has ceased to live.' For, provided there was any mention of life in the case, it carried yet some sound of consolation."

"I am persuaded," says Lady Gethin, analysing her feelings of affright and bewilderment at the prospect of Death, her quailing inability to front that ever instans vultus tyranni, against whose tyranny there is no appeal,-"I am persuaded 'tis happy to be somewhat dull of apprehension in this case; and yet the best way to cure the pensiveness of the thoughts of death, is to think of it as little as possible." Montaigne would have men familiarise themselves with it, and reason themselves out of their fear and trembling. La Rochefoucauld, on the other hand, is of opinion, that "reason" rather intensifies than dulls the dread of death; adding, "Tout ce qu'elle peut faire pour nous est de nous conseiller d'en détourner les yeux pour les arrêter sur d'autres objets.' The old ostrich tactics again. Where ignorance is bliss, ignore by all means. As in the "moral" that concludes La Fontaine's fable of the Sheep, the Pig, and the Kid,

Et le moins prévoyant est toujours le plus sage.

Boswell one day mentioned to Dr. Johnson that he had seen the execution of several convicts at Tyburn, two days before, and that none of them seemed to be under any concern. The doctor said, "Most of them, sir, have never thought at all." "But," rejoins Boswell," is not the fear of death natural to man ?" "So much so, sir," replied the sage, "that the whole of life is but keeping away the thoughts of it."

well's Tyburn experiences remind us of what Thomas Hood says, towards the tragic close of one of his tragi-comic poems (the longest of them, and the best):

But life is sweet, and mortality blind,
And youth is hopeful, and Fate is kind
In concealing the day of sorrow;
And enough is the present tense of toil-
For this world is, to all, a stiffish soil-
And the mind flies back with a glad recoil
From the debts not due till to-morrow.
Wherefore else does the Spirit fly
And bid its daily cares good-by,
Along with its daily clothing?
Just as the felon condemned to die-
With a very natural loathing-
Leaving the Sheriff to dream of ropes,
From his gloomy cell in a vision elopes,
To caper on sunny greens and slopes,
Instead of the dance upon nothing.

Charles Lamb, again, enumerating in a letter to Southey (quoted in our last chapter) the familiar home associations to which his home-loving spirit clung, exclaims in his ingenuous way: "God help me when I come to put off these snug relations, and to get abroad into the world to come! I shall be like the crow on the sand, as Wordsworth has it; but I won't think on it; no need I hope yet." Need or not, he will follow Mrs. Quickly's counsel, and "won't think on it," will ignore this Presence that is not to be put by. If it cannot be put by, at least let it be put off. Not, however, with any kind of understanding that when he has a more convenient season he will send for it. It will send for him, before ever that day dawns. Writing to another correspondent about his sister's recurring attacks, he mournfully observes: "It cuts great slices out of the time, the little time, we shall have to live together. I don't know but the recurrence of these illnesses might help me to sustain her death better than if we had had no partial separations. But I won't talk of death. I will imagine us immortal, or forget that we are otherwise." Mankind at large make a practical study of this art of forgetting.

How exquisitely true to nature is Shakspeare's presentment of Justice Shallow, in the scene where that fussy ancient talks away with good cousin Silence about the days that are past, and the friends that are gone. "O, the mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead!" Silence appositely remarks, in his stolid way, "We shall all follow, cousin." Briskly the Justice responds, "Certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist says, is certain to all; all shall die.-How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?” SIL. Truly, cousin, I was not there.

SHAL. Death is certain.-Is old Double of your town living yet?
SIL. Dead, sir.

SHAL. Dead!-See, see!-he drew a good bow! And dead!-he shot a fine shoot:-John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money upon his head. Dead! he would have clapped i' the clout at twelve score [yards]; and carried you a forehand shaft a fourteen and fourteen and a half, that it would have done a man's heart good to see.-How a score of ewes now?

SIL. Thereafter as they be: a score of good ewes may be worth ten pounds. SHAL. And is old Double dead!

And anon the Justice might have sought another diversion by inquiring the price of poultry, or the market value of breadstuffs, but for the entrance of Sir John Falstaff, which conveniently and very summarily disposes of Death and old Double.

Scott, in "Guy Mannering," has a sort of parallel passage, longo intervallo, in one of the flighty speeches of the poor laird of Ellangowan, complaining of his tenants: "Luckie Finniston sent up three kain hens [a sort of rent in kind] that were a shame to be seen only last week, and yet she has twelve bows sowing of victual; indeed her goodman, Duncan Finniston-that's him that's gone-(we must all die, Mr. Mannering; that's ower true)-and speaking of that, let us live in the mean while, for here's breakfast on the table, and the Dominie ready to say the grace."

For ever in the neighbourhood of an inevitable Death, man can forget, says Carlyle, "that he is born to die; of his Life, which, strictly meditated, contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can conceive lightly, as of a simple implement wherewith to do day-labour and earn wages. So cunningly does Nature, the mother of all highest Art, which only apes her from afar, body forth the Finite from the Infinite;' and guide man safe on his wondrous path, not more by endowing him with vision, than, at the right place, with blindness! Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work, Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which she benignantly conceals; in Life too, the roots and inward circulations which stretch down fearfully to the regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their existence, and only the fair stem with its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall disclose itself, and joyfully grow." It being our philosopher's doctrine, in effect, that this same Nature strives, like a kind mother, to hide from us her darksome mystery-that she would have us rest on her beautiful and awful bosom as if it were our secure home-and would have us build and walk on the bottomless, boundless Deep, as if the film which supported us there (which any scratch of a bare bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol-shot instantaneously burn up) were no film, but a solid rock-foundation.

IX.

A DIGRESSION ON TALKING Of the Dead:-Cowper and MRS. UNWIN-LORD
BYRON AND Allegra-HORACE WALPOLE" CHRISTOPHER NORTH"-MIT-
CHELL'S "REVERIES OF A BACHELOR"-THE PRIEST OF ENNERDALE-SIR
WALTER SCOTT-ROBERT SOUTHEY.

-Two daughters lost he-one that died disgraced,
Whose name was therefore to be named no more-
The other lived beloved, and slept in peace,

So loved as living, so deplored as dead,

That still more sternly the old man forbade
(In th' inarticulate anguish of his soul)

All mention by survivors of her name

And from sheer doting fondness of the child
Winced at the faintest hint that e'er his home
Had known, and felt the power, of such a presence.

HOFFMANN.

It is not merely the light-hearted and frivolous to whom the subject of Death, in all its aspects, is abhorrent or distressing. Some men,-of melancholy temperament, and habitually contemplative mood, and strong