on the cards—­would destroy all these, and bring about more serious matters than the shedding of tears.  In a man’s earlier illnesses, too, he had not only no such definite future to work out, he had a stronger spring of life and hope; he was rich in time, and could wait; and lying in his chamber now, he cannot help remembering that, as Mr. Thackeray expresses it, there comes at last an illness to which there may be no convalescence.  What if that illness be already come?  And so there is nothing left for him, but to bear the rod with patience, and to exercise a humble faith in the Ruler of all.  If he recovers, some half-dozen people will be made happy; if he does not recover, the same number of people will be made miserable for a little while, and, during the next two or three days, acquaintances will meet in the street—­“You’ve heard of poor So-and-so?  Very sudden!  Who would have thought it?  Expect to meet you at ——­’s on Thursday.  Good-bye.”  And so to the end.  Your death and my death are mainly of importance to ourselves.  The black plumes will be stripped off our hearses within the hour; tears will dry, hurt hearts close again, our graves grow level with the church-yard, and although we are away, the world wags on.  It does not miss us; and those who are near us, when the first strangeness of vacancy wears off, will not miss us much either.

We are curious as to death-beds and death-bed sayings; we wish to know how the matter stands; how the whole thing looks to the dying.  Unhappily—­perhaps, on the whole, happily—­we can gather no information from these.  The dying are nearly as reticent as the dead.  The inferences we draw from the circumstances of death, the pallor, the sob, the glazing eye, are just as likely to mislead us as not.  Manfred exclaims, “Old man, ’tis not so difficult to die!” Sterling wrote Carlyle “that it was all very strange, yet not so strange as it seemed to the lookers on.”  And so, perhaps, on the whole it is.  The world has lasted six thousand years now, and, with the exception of those at present alive, the millions who have breathed upon it—­splendid emperors, horny-fisted clowns, little children, in whom thought has never stirred—­have died, and what they have done, we also shall be able to do.  It may not be so difficult, may not be so terrible, as our fears whisper.  The dead keep their secrets, and in a little while we shall be as wise as they—­and as taciturn.

[1] Montaigne.

[2] Bacon.

WILLIAM DUNBAR

If it be assumed that the North Briton is, to an appreciable extent, a different creature from the Englishman, the assumption is not likely to provoke dispute.  No one will deny us the prominence of our cheek-bones, and our pride in the same.  How far the difference extends, whether it involves merit or demerit, are questions not now sought to be settled.  Nor is it important to discover how the difference arose;