That some impurity doth not pollute." Whatsoever is under the moon is subject to corruption, alterations; and so long as thou livest upon earth look not for other. Thou shalt not herc find peaceable and cheerful days, quiet times, but rather clouds, storms, calumnies, such is our fate. And as those errant planets, in their distinct orbs, have their several motions, sometimes direct, stationary, retrograde, in apogeo, perigeo, oriental, occidental, combust, feral, free, and as our astrologers will have their fortitudes Usque adeò nulla est sincera voluptas, and debilities, by reason of those good Solicitum aliquid lætis intervenit. and bad irradiations, conferred to each Heaven and earth are much alike; those other's site in the heavens, in their terms,

houses, case, detriments, &c.; so we rise and fall in this world, ebb and flow, in and out, reared and dejected, lead a troublesome life, subject to many accidents and casualties of fortunes, variety of passions, infirmities, as well from ourselves as others.-Anatomy of Melancholy.

[SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 1605-1682.] LIFE, DEATH, AND IMMOR

TALITY.

If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live with death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah were work for Archimedes: common counters sum up the life of Moses his man. Our days become considerable, like petty sums, by minute accumulations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers; and our days of a span long make not one little finger.

strokes of affliction leave but short smart
upon us.
Sense endureth no extremities,
and sorrows destroy us or themselves.
To weep into stones are fables. Afflic-
tions induce callosities; miseries are
slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity.
To be ignorant of evils to come, and
forgetful of evils past, is a merciful pro-
vision in nature, whereby we digest the
mixture of our few and evil days, and,
our delivered senses not relapsing into
cutting remembrances, our sorrows are
not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.
A great part of antiquity contented their
hopes of subsistency with a transmigra-
tion of their souls-a good way to con-
tinue their memories, while, having the
advantage of plural successes, they could
not but act something remarkable in such
variety of beings, and, enjoying the fame
of their past selves, make accumulation
of glory unto their last durations. Others,
rather than be lost in the uncomfortable
night of nothing, were content to recede
into the common being, and make one
particle of the public soul of all things,
which was no more than to return into
their unknown and divine original again.
Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied,
contriving their bodies in sweet consisten-
cies, to attend the return of their souls.
But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and
folly. The Egyptian mummies, which
Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice
now consumeth. Mummy is become
merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and
Pharaoh is sold for balsams.

If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity into it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew politically cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretched our days, misery makes Alemena's nights, and In vain do individuals hope for immortime hath no wings unto it. But the tality, or any patent from oblivion, in most tedious being is that which can un-preservations below the moon: men have wish itself, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond the malcontent of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity; content to have so far been, as to have a title to future being, although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an abortion. Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest

been deceived even in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth;-durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that

C

wander about the sun, with Phaeton's plating the extremities thereof, I find not favour, would make clear conviction. anything therein able to daunt the courage There is nothing strictly immortal, but of a man, much less a well-resolved immortality. Whatever hath no begin- Christian. And therefore am not angry ning, may be confident of no end;-which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself;--and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of itself; all others have a dependent being and within the reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death, makes a folly of posthumous memory.-Urn-Burial.

LIGHT THE SHADOW OF GOD.

LIGHT that makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the fourth day, when they were created above the horizon with the sun, and there was not an eye to behold them. The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under this name. The sun itself is but the dark Simulachrum, and light but the shadow of God. --Ibid.

THE FEAR OF DEATH.

I THANK God I have not those strait ligaments or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death. Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof, or, by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous relics, like vespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but that, marshalling all the horrors, and contem

at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this common fate, and like the best of them to die, that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind of nothing for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not intreat a moment's breath for me; could the devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought; I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this is to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do often desire death. I honour any man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me naturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible regiments, that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a Pagan there may be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come. . .

It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live; and herein religion hath taught us a noble example. For all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scævola, or Codros, do not parallel or match that one of Job; and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those in the way or prologue to it. "Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo ["I would not die, but care not to be dead"]. Were I of Cæsar's religion, I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at one

blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once. It is not only the mischief of diseases, and villany of poisons, that make an end of us: we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet he doth not kill us. There is, therefore, but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death: God would not exempt himself from that, the misery of immortality in the flesh; he undertook not that was immortal. Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the optics of those eyes to behold felicity; the first day of our jubilee is death. The devil hath therefore failed of his desires: we are happier with death, than we should have been without it. There is no misery but in himself, where there is no end of misery; and so, indeed, in his own sense, the stoic is in the right. He forgets that he can die who complains of misery! we are in the power of no calamity while

death is in our own.-Ibid.

ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God; at which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away because he did not worship thee: God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me, and couldst thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble? Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.-The Liberty of Prophesying.

LOVE AND MARRIAGE.

THEY that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage.

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation; every little thing can blast an infant blossom; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new-weaned AN boy: but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and the wife

"WHEN Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man