place, therefore, we will only deal with it, and with the rest hereafter."

Into these passages respecting death Eliot throws all his eloquence: -" Death," he says, "has its consideration but in terror; and what is assum'd from that, is like the imaginations of children in the darke, a meere fancie and opinion." With a melancholy fondness, the anticipation of their approaching intimacy, he defends death as a friend might be defended. It has been slandered, he says, by those who cannot have known it, " most untruly, most unjustly slandered." "For either happiness it contains, or it repels calamity, or gives satiety and weariness an end, or does prevent the hardness of old age! A conclusion 'tis to all; to some their wish; but to none more meriting and deserving, than to whom it comes uncalled for! It frees from servitude, dissolves the chains of captives, sets all prisoners at liberty, and restores the banished to their country. All their sorrows and disasters have termination in this point. It has been called humanis tempestatibus portus, the harbour of human miseries, the sedation of our troubles. Implying thus the comparison of our life to a fluctuation on the seas, we as poor mariners sailing in the weak vessels of our nature and fortune, the wind tossing us by the continual agitation of her tempests, trouble being instant and upon us, danger most iminent and before us, hope fled, safety nowhere to be found, Death only is the haven to receive us, where there is calmness and tranquility, where there is rest from all these storms and tempests! In that port all fluctuations of our life are quieted and composed; nor winds nor seas have power upon us there; fortune and time are excluded from that road; there we anchor in security, without the distractions of new troubles; there without danger or hazard do we ride."

With a slight shade of humour, such as issues so naturally out of a subject of this sort, and suits with it so well, Eliot next calls for the evidence of men who have themselves died, as to the character of death. "No great variety," he observes, "can be looked for in this strange kinde of proof, men so seldom returning from the dead." This is simply an introduction to the story of that Athenian whom Plato raised to speak of the terrors below the earth. Such terrors were only

for "the oppressors of mankind, such as had made their wills their laws, tyrants, Arideus and his followers, whom hell itself abhorred!" Far different was the lot of the good, " the servants unto virtue." Life is afterwards beautifully presented by Eliot, in contrast with its dark neighbour, as only "an inne to rest in, a lodging for the night, an hostelry in our travels, in our continual journey to the mansion of our fathers!" Nay, life itself, he exclaims, taken at the best, is only made up of various deaths, one passion dying, another succeeding but to die. "So that our whole life is but an exercise of dying, and all the changes and vicissitudes of nature, death, in a measure and degree! Why then should death be thought so terrible? where is the reason of that fear?" Rather, he afterwards suggests, should it be made a matter of triumph and of glory. "What martyrs have there been even in the work of dying! More joying, more rejoicing, than in all the acts of life! The glory of the Deity, the incarnate majesty of the Son, those incomprehensible misteries of divinity, then appearing to them, by revelation to their sense, or by illumination of the fancy, - the heavens opening to give free passage to their view, - these as it were descending unto them, giving them the possession here of that happiness, that eternal happiness and felicity, which is the chief object of all hopes; not that happiness we treat of, the summum bonum of this life, the bonum publicum of our monarchy, but the supernatural felicity to come, the transcendant happiness hereafter!"

Nor will Eliot rest at these examples of the victorious agonies of martyrdom, since they are sustained as it were by the divine presence. There is a bravery which comes nearer to his own, a grandeur of moral courage which needs no miracle to help it. " I will resort," he says, "to patterns of morality. Then, to see the confidence in them, the willingness and cheerfulness of dying, - take it from those Grecians, those three hundred at Thermopolis, who, for their country, opposed themselves to all the power of Xerxes - to those many millions of the Persians, whose thirst scarce seas could satisfy, nor whole regions for one day find provisions for their hunger! Yet unto these, those Grecians could expose themselves, so few against so many, for the safety of their mother. The clouds

of darts that fell on them, they tearm'd an umbrell for the sunne; their danger they made glory; their death they thought their life; so far from terror was it that they made it the subject of their hopes. O happy men! thus for their country to have died! Most happy country, to have brought forth such men ! whose death became the character of her life, and was to her and them a patent of immortality!" Among the crowding thoughts of many examples of this kind, Eliot kindles into a greater fervour, and he fills the solitary recesses of his dungeon with men of Rome, of Athens, and of Sparta, - "fellows, whom death itself might fear, sooner than be fearful unto them. Mirrors of men," he finely continues, "are chronicled for a free acceptance of that fate; women did scorn their children that did not scorn to flie it!" And as Eliot thus recalls the past, an example nobler than all the others rises up, because completer in the elements of moral grandeur, in the perfection of self-control, the monarchy of man. The philosopher Ramus stands before him, "who died not as Cato, to avoid the dying by his enemies, nor suddenly, to prevent the torment of the time, nor as those Grecians, in the heat of blood and danger, when death does come unthought, - but giving it all leave of preparation, admitting all circumstance of terror, in that form which his enemies had cast, to the extremitie of their malice, - so he encounters, so he receives and meets it, even in its very contemplation! His speculations were upon it, it was the subject of his thoughts, and in that he valued it more precious than his life."

To this illustrious shadow of the past, SIR WALTER RALEIGH succeeds! His image, indeed, had scarcely vanished from those dark walls that now surrounded Eliot, and his spirit remained in the magnanimity of Eliot's soul. "Shall I not add, as parallel to this, a wonder and example of our own? such as if that old philosopher were yet living, without dishonor he might acknowledge, as the equal of his virtue. Take it in that else unmatched _ fortitude of our RALEIGH! the magnanimity of his sufferings, that large chronicle of fortitude! All the preparations that are terible presented to his eyeguards and officers about him - fetters and chains upon himthe scaffold and executioner before him- and then the axe, and more cruel expectation of his enemies! And what did all this work on the resolution of this worthy? Made it an impression of weak fear? or a distraction of his reason? Nothing so little did that great soul suffer! but gathered more strength and advantage upon either. His mind became the clearer, as if already it had been freed from the cloud and oppression of the body; and the trial gave an illustration to his courage, so that it changed the affection of his enemies, and turned their joy to sorrow, and all men else it filled with admiration; leaving no doubt but this, whether death were more acceptable to him, or he more welcome unto death!"

How nobly expressed this is! The style of Eliot, uncramped by the authorities to which he chose at times to link it, was as free and grand as his own free thoughts. These his friend Hampden, as the treatise advances, alludes to with a profound deference. "Your apprehensions, that ascend a region above those clouds which shadow us, are fitt to pierce such heights; and others to receave such notions as descend from thence; which, while you are pleased to impart, you make the demonstrations of your favour to become the rich possessions of your ever faithful friend."

Eliot betrays a melancholy reluctance to let the subject of death pass from him. Assuming that these examples of fearlessness in dying are of too exalted a character for the emulation of all men, that all have not the same motives, or means, of sustainment, he very beautifully says: "There is no affection within man but has given examples in this case. Hope, joy, sorrow, fear itself, has conquered it, the weakest of all others! Fear of death has forced men to act the thing they fear." And, after some very subtle reasoning to this point, he proceeds: "therefore, that truth so known, we may in a generality conclude, that death and fear are conquered both by love. Sorrow can do as much. And we have it in the infirmest of her daughters, pity, which is the tenderest of all thoughts, yet that subdues this fear, as Tacitus notes it of the multitudes after the fall of Otho." Yet Eliot concludes not even here. Still he lingers on the praise and the privilege of death. shall then no more be sick; I shall then no more be bound; I shall then leave off to fear; I shall then not die again. If

"I

death were an evil at the first, then it shall be no more. All the crosses and disasters, all the calamities and afflictions, all things that are feareful and evil in this life, then shall I be free from! No death shall thenceforth be an interruption to my happiness, therefore why should I fear it? But if death have all these priviledges, why then do we live? why do we not, as Cleombrotus, having read Plato's discourses of the immortality of the soul, precipitate ourselves? hasten to that excellence? press to that rich magazine of treasures? why do we bear such miseries in life, there being such felicity in death? and the transition in our power, so facile and so ready? The answer with the ethicks is emergent: mors non debet esse fuga actionum, sed actio. Death must not be a flight from action, but an action. Subterfuge is the property of a coward; blows and wounds are the honor of a soldier. Dangers must not affright, but harden him, where the cause requires his hazard." And through much eloquence he proceeds, impressing over again, and with an increased fervour, the necessity of subduing fear, "though the sun itself should tremble - though the immense fabric of the world should shake;" and at last concluding by praying of all men, in all cases, to "expect calmly that issue which time and virtue have appointed. Thus we must look for death; not as an enemy, but a friend; which in his own hours visits us, expects no invitation, may not be compelled, but has a free liberty before him. When he comes, he comes attended by many priviledges, decked with flowers of happiness, rest, and sweetness, and exemption of all the evils of life. Therefore there is not the least cause to fear it, or to raise that jealousy and distraction in our government."

The duty of opposing the desires is the next matter discussed. Eliot, after a delicate handling of the bodily passions, points out the jealousy and restless irresolution of desire, agitated between the doubt of attainment and the doubt of loss, hindering even its own satisfaction, and joined with sor

"Shall this, then," he asks, "have entertainment in the heart, where happiness and felicity should dwell? That it is a vanity and mere nothing, either the act or the consequence do prove it; for, in itself, what is it more than an imagination and light fancy? In the effect and consequence, does any man