THE

LAST MOMENTS OF EMINENT MEN.

"LIFE," says Sir William Temple, "is like wine; he who would drink it pure must not drain it to the dregs." "I do not wish," Byron would say, "to live to become old." The expression of the ancient poet, "that to die young is a boon of Heaven to its favorites," was repeatedly quoted by him with approbation. The certainty of a speedy release he would call the only relief against burdens which could not be borne were they not of very limited duration.

But the general sentiment of mankind declares length of days to be desirable. After an active and successful career, the repose of decline is serene and cheerful. By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy. The hour of evening is not necessarily overcast; and the aged man, exchanging the pursuits of ambition for the quiet of observation, the strife of public discussion for the diffuse but instructive language of experience, passes to the grave amid grateful recollections and the tranquil enjoyment of satisfied desires.

The happy, it is agreed by all, are afraid to contemplate their end; the unhappy, it has been said, look forward to it as a release from suffering. "I think of death often,"

said a distinguished but dissatisfied man; "and I view it as a refuge. There is something calm and soothing to me in the thought; and the only time that I feel repugnance to it is on a fine day, in solitude, in a beautiful country, when all nature seems rejoicing in light and life.”

This is the language of self-delusion. Numerous as may be the causes for disgust with life, its close is never contemplated with carelessness. Religion may elevate the soul to a sublime reliance on a future existence; nothing else can do it. The love of honor may brave danger; the passion of melancholy may indulge an aversion to continued being; philosophy may take its last rest with composure; the sense of shame may conduct to fortitude; yet they who would disregard the grave must turn their thoughts from the consideration of its terrors. It is an impulse of nature to strive to preserve our being; and the longing can not be eradicated. The mind may shun the contemplation of horrors; it may fortify itself by refusing to observe the nearness or the extent of the impending evil; but the instinct of life is stubborn; and he who looks directly at its termination and professes indifference is a hypocrite or is self-deceived. He that calls boldly upon Death is sure to be dismayed on finding him near. The oldest are never so old, but they desire life for one day longer; the child looks to its parent as if to discern a glimpse of hope; even the infant, as it exhales its breath, springs from its pillow to meet its mother as if there were help where there is love.

There is a story told of one of the favorite marshals of Napoleon, who, in a battle in the south of Germany, was struck by a cannon-ball, and so severely wounded that there was no possibility of a respite. Summoning the surgeon,

he ordered his wounds to be dressed; and, when aid was declared to be unavailing, the dying officer clamorously demanded that Napoleon should be sent for, as one who had power to stop the effusion of blood, and awe nature itself into submission. Life expired amid maledictions and threats heaped upon the innocent surgeon. This foolish frenzy may have appeared like blasphemy; it was but the uncontrolled outbreak of the instinct of self-preservation, in a rough and undisciplined mind.

Even in men of strong religious convictions, the end is not always met with serenity; and the preacher and philosopher sometimes express an apprehension which can not be pacified. The celebrated British moralist, Samuel Johnson, was the instructor of his age; his works are full of the austere lessons of reflecting wisdom. It might have been supposed that religion would have reconciled him to the decree of Providence; that philosophy would have taught him to acquiesce in a necessary issue; that science would have inspired him with confidence in the skill of his medical attendants. And yet it was not so. A sullen gloom overclouded his faculties; he could not summon resolution to tranquilize his emotions; and, in the absence of his attendants, he gashed himself with ghastly and debilitating wounds, as if the blind lacerations of his misguided arm could prolong the moments of an existence which the best physicians of London declared to be numbered.

"Is there anything on earth I can do for you?" said Taylor to Wolcott, known as Peter Pindar, as he lay on his death-bed. Give me back my youth," were the last words of the satirical buffoon.

If Johnson could hope for relief from 'self-inflicted

wounds, if the poet could prefer to his friend the useless prayer for a restoration of youth, we may readily believe what historians relate to us of the end of Louis XI. of France, a monarch who was not destitute of eminent qualities as well as repulsive vices; possessing courage, a knowledge of men and of business, an indomitable will, a disposition favorable to the administration of justice among his subjects; viewing impunity in wrong as exclusively a royal prerogative. Remorse, fear, a consciousness of being detected, disgust with life and horror of death-these were the sentiments which troubled the sick-couch of the absolute king. The first of his line who bore the epithet of “the most Christian," he was so abandoned to egotism that he allowed the veins of children to be opened, and greedily drank their blood; believing, with physicians of that day, that it would renovate his youth, or at least check the decay of nature. The cruelty was useless. At last, feeling the approach of death to be certain, he sent for an anchorite from Calabria, since revered as St. Francis de Paula; and, when the hermit arrived, the monarch of France entreated him to spare his life. He threw himself at the feet of the man who was believed to derive healing virtues from the sanctity of his character; he begged the intercession of his prayers; he wept, he supplicated, he hoped that the voice. of a Calabrian monk would reverse the order of nature, and successfully plead for his respite.

We find the love of life still more strongly acknowledged by an English poet, who, after describing our being as the dream of a shadow, "a weak-built isthmus between two eternities, so frail that it can sustain neither wind nor wave," yet avows his preference of a few days', nay, of a few hours'

longer residence upon earth, to all the fame which poetry can achieve.

"Fain would I see that prodigal,

Who his to-morrow would bestow,

For all old Homer's life, e'er since he died, till now."

We do not believe the poet sincere, for one passion may prevail over another, and in many a breast the love of fame is at times, if not always, the strongest. But if those who pass their lives in a struggle for glory may desire the attainment of their object at any price, the competitors for political power are apt to cling fast to the scene of their rivalry. Lord Castlereagh could indeed commit suicide; but it was not from disgust; his mind dwelt on the precarious condition of his own elevation, and the unsuccessful policy in which he had involved his country. He did not love death; he did not contemplate it with indifference; he failed to observe its terrors, because his attention was absorbed by apprehensions which pressed themselves upon him with unrelenting force.

The ship of the Marquis of Badajoz, Viceroy of Peru, was set on fire by Captain Stayner. The Marchioness, and her daughter, who was betrothed to the Duke of MedinaCeli, swooned in the flames, and could not be rescued. The Marquis resigned himself also to die, rather than survive with the memory of such horrors. It was not that he was careless of life; the natural feelings remained unchanged; the love of grandeur, the pride of opulence and dominion; but he preferred death, because that was out of sight, and would rescue him from the presence of absorbing and intolerable sorrows.

Madame de Sévigné, in her charming letters, gives the