All things have their seasons.

mony and of his body. He gave me a morning visit (says our author) and after that visit he went away, and spent the rest of the day with a friend of his that was desperately sick. At night he was merry at supper, and seized immediately after with a quinsy, which dispatched him in a few hours. This man, that had money at use in all places, and in the very course and height of his prosperity, was thus cut off. How foolish a thing is it then, for a man to flatter himself with long hopes, and to pretend to dispose of the future? Nay, the very present slips through our fingers, and there is not that moment which we can call our own. How vain a thing is it for us to enter upon projects, and to say to ourselves—well, I will go build, purchase, discharge such offices, settle my affairs, and then retire. We are all of us born to the same casualties, all equally frail, and uncertain of to-morrow. At the very altar, where we pray for life, we learn to die, by seeing the sacrifices killed before us. But there is no need of a wound, or searching the heart for it, when the noose of a cord, or the smothering of a pillow, will do the work. All things have their seasons, they begin, they increase, and they die. The heavens and the earth grow old, and are appointed their periods. That which we call death, is but a pause, or suspension; and, in truth, a progress to life; only our thoughts look downwar

come.

A great mind submits itself to God.

upon the body, and not forward upon things to All things under the sun are mortal, cities, empires, and the time will come, when it shall be a question where they were, and, perchance, whether ever they had a being or no. Some will be destroyed by war, others by luxury, fire, inundations, earthquakes; why should it trouble me then to die, as a forerunner of an universal dissolution? A great mind submits itself to God, and suffers willingly what the law of the universe will otherwise bring to pass upon necessity. That good old man Bassus, though with one foot in the grave, how chearful a mind does he bear? he lives in the view of death, and contemplates his own end with less concern of thought or, countenance than he would do another man's. It is a hard lesson, and we are a long time a learning of it, to receive our death without trouble, especially in the case of Bassus. In other deaths there is a mixture of hope, a disease may be cured, a fire quenched, a falling house either propped or avoided; the sea may swallow a man, and throw him up again. A pardon may pose betwixt the axe and the body, but in the case of old age there is no place for either hope or intercession. Let us live in our bodies therefore, as if we were only to lodge in them this night, and to leave them to-morrow. It is the frequent thought of death that must fortify us

inter

Sorrow win bounds is allowable.

against the necessity of it. He that has armed himself against poverty, may perhaps come to live in plenty. A man may strengthen himself against pain, and yet live in a state health; against the loss of friends, and never lose any: but he that fortifies himself against the fear of death, shall most certainly have occasion to employ that virtue. It is the care of a wise and good man to look to his manners and actions, and rather how well he lives, than how long; for to die sooner or later is not the business, but to die well, or ill-for death brings us to immortality.

AGAINST IMMODERATE SORROW FOR THE

DEATH OF FRIENDS.

NEXT to the encounter of death in our own bodies, the most sensible calamity, to an honest man, is the death of a friend; and we are not, in truth, without some generous instances of those that have preferred a friend's life to their own; and yet this affliction, which by nature is so grievous to us, is by virtue and providence made familiar and easy.

To lament the death of a friend is both natural and just, a sigh, or a tear, I would allow to his memory, but no profuse or obstinate sorrow. Clamorous and public lamentations are not so much the effects of grief, as vain-glory. He that

Of ostentatious grief.

is sadder in company than alone, shews rather the ambition of his sorrow, than the piety of it. Nay, and in the violence of his passion, there fall out twenty things that set him a laughing. At the long run, time cures all, but it were better done by moderation and wisdom. Some people do as good as set a watch upon themselves, as if they were afraid that their grief would make an escape. The ostentation of grief is many times more than the grief itself. When any body is within hearing, what groans and outcries? when they are alone and private, all is hush and quiet: so soon as any body comes in, they are at it again, and down they throw themselves upon the bed, fall to wringing of their hands, and wishing of themselves dead, which they might have executed by themselves; but their sorrow goes off with their company. We forsake nature, and run over to the practice of the people, that never were the authors of any thing that is good. If destiny were to be wrought upon by tears, I would allow you to spend your days and nights in sadness and mourning, tearing of your hair, and beating of your breast; but if fate be inexorable, and death will keep what he has taken, grief is to no purpose. And yet I would not advise insensibility and hardness; it were inhumanity, and not virtue, not to be moved at the separation of familiar friends, and relations: now, in such cases, we

1

There it a decorum in sorrow.

cannot command ourselves, we cannot forbear weeping, and we ought not to forbear: but let us not pass the bounds of affection, and run into imitation; within these limits it is some ease to the mind.

A wise man gives way to tears in some cases, and cannot avoid them in others, when one is struck with the surprise of ill news, as the death of a friend, or the like; or upon the last embrace of an acquaintance under the hand of an executioner, he lies under a natural necessity of weeping and trembling. In another case we may indulge our sorrow, as upon the memory of a dead friend's conversation, or kindness, we may let fall tears of generosity and joy. We favour the one, and we are overcome by the other, and this is well; but we are not upon any terms to force them; they may flow of their own accord, without derogating from the dignity of a wise man, who at the same time both preserves his gravity, and obeys nature. Nay, there is a certain decorum even in weeping; for excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter. Why do we not as well cry, when our trees that we took pleasure in shed their leaves, as at the loss of other satisfactions; when the next season repairs them, either with the same again, or others in their places. We may accuse fate, but we cannot alter it, for it is hard and inexorable, and not to be removed,