It seems to me those verses shine like the stars.  They shine out of a great, deep calm.  When he turns to Heaven, a Sabbath comes over that man’s mind; and his face lights up from it with a glory of thanks and prayers.  His sense of religion stirs through his whole being.  In the fields, in the town; looking at the birds in the trees; at the children in the streets; in the morning or in the moonlight; over his books in his own room; in a happy party at a country merrymaking or a town assembly, good will and peace to God’s creatures, and love and awe of Him who made them, fill his pure heart and shine from his kind face.  If Swift’s life was the most wretched, I think Addison’s was one of the most enviable.  A life prosperous and beautiful—­a calm death—­an immense fame and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless name.

Notes.—­Goldsmith (see biographical notice, page 215) founded his descriptions of Auburn in the poem of “The Deserted Village,” and of Wakefield, in “The Vicar of Wakefield,” on recollections of his early home at Lissoy.  Ireland.

Addison.  See biographical notice, page 295.  The quotation is from a “Letter from Italy to Charles Lord Halifax.”

Swift, Jonathan (b. 1667, d. 1745), the celebrated Irish satirist and poet, was a misanthrope.  His disposition made his life miserable in the extreme, and he finally became insane.

CXXIX.  IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. (438)

Scene—­Cato, alone, sitting in a thoughtful posture;—­in his hand,
  Plato’s book on the immortality of the soul; a drawn sword on the
  table by him.

Cato.  It must be so.  Plato, thou reasonest well! 
      Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
      This longing after immortality? 
      Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
      Of falling into naught?  Why shrinks the soul
      Back on herself, and startles at destruction? 
      ’T is the divinity that stirs within us;
      ’T is heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
      And intimates eternity to man. 
      Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought! 
      Through what variety of untried being,
      Through what new scenes and changes must we pass? 
      The wide, unbounded prospect lies before me: 
      But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. 
      Here will I hold.  If there’s a Power above us,
      (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud
      Through all her works) he must delight in virtue;
      And that which he delights in must be happy. 
      But when?—­or where?—­This world was made for Caesar. 
      I’m weary of conjectures—­this must end them. 
                              (Seizes the sword.)
      Thus am I doubly armed:  my death and life,
      My bane and antidote are both before me. 
      This in a moment