production of art. Some of the most eminent lawyers wrote excellent verses. Sir Thomas More, Jones, Blackstone, Erskine, and Curran, had considerable talents for poetry. But poetry has very little to do with law; neither has it with chemistry, and yet Sir Humphry Davy has left effusions of this kind behind him which would not be discreditable to any bard.

We may conclude with Goethe, "there is a difference between the art of painting and that of writing; their bases may touch each other, but their summits are distinct and separate." And from the lists that have been noticed of the painters and poets, we have seen there is wide difference between the influence of an imitative art and an imaginative pursuit, on health.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAST MOMENTS OF MEN OF GENIUS.

THOUGH to the moralist it is of much less importance how a man dies than how he lives, it is nevertheless a matter of more than curiosity to inquire how far the words and actions, the theoretical philosophy and the practical conduct of men correspond in their last moments. In such moments, what influence has mental cultivation on the conduct of individuals? Or, is there indeed any perceptible difference between the bearing of the cultivated and uncultivated mind in the last scene of all? Generally speaking, the influence of literature and science over the mind and the demeanor of men, is at no period displayed to such advantage as at that of the close of life. What medical man has attended at the death-bed of the scholar, or the studious man, and has not found death divested of half its terrors by the dignified composure of the sufferer, and his state one of peace and serenity, compared with the abject condition of the unenlightened mind in the same extremity? Those, perhaps, who re

linquish life with the most reluctance, paradoxical as it may appear to be, are to be found in the most opposite grades of society-those in the very highest and lowest walks of life. In different countries, likewise, it is singular in what different degrees people are influenced by the fear of eternity, and in what different ways the pomp of death, the peculiar mode of sepulture, reasonable views of religion, and terrifying superstitions affect the people of particular countries. The Irish, who are certainly not deficient in physical courage, support bodily suffering, and encounter death, with less fortitude than the people of this country. A German entertains his fate, in his dying moments, more like a philosopher than a Frenchman. And, of all places in the world, the capital of Turkey is it, where we have seen death present the greatest terrors, and where life has been most unwillingly resigned. The Arabs, on the other hand, professing the same religion as the Turks, differ from them wholly in this respect, and meet death with greater indifference than the humbler classes of any other country, Mahomedan or Christian. It is truly surprising with what apathy an Arab, in extremity, will lay him down to die, and with what pertinacity the Turk will cling to life-with what abject importunity he will solicit the physician to save and preserve

him.

In various epidemics in the East, we have had occasion to observe the striking difference in the conduct of both in their last moments, and especially in the expedition of Ibrahim Pasha to the Morea, when hundreds were dying daily in the camp at Suda. There the haughty Moslem went. to the society of his celestial houries like a miserable slave, while the good humoured Arab went like a hero to his long last home. The difference in their moral qualities, and the mental superiority the Egyptian over the Turk, made all the distinction.

The result of the observation of many a closing scene in various climes, leads to the conclusion that death is envisaged by those with the least horror, whose lives have been least influenced by superstition or fanaticism, as well as by those who have cultivated literature and science with the most ardour. "Of the great number," says Sir Henry Halford, in his Essay on Death, to whom it has been my painful `professional duty to have administered in the last hours of their lives, I have sometimes felt surprised that so few have appeared reluctant to go to "the undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns."

And probably, were it not for the adventitious. terrors which are given to death--for all the

frightful paraphernalia of the darkened chamber, the hideous vesture of the corpse, the lugubrious visages of 'the funeral performers,' the solemn mutes who 'mimic sorrow when the heart's not sad,' and all the frightful' pomp and circumstance' of death-the sable pall, the waving plumes;were it not for these, and the revolting custom of heightening the horrors of sepulture, the formal mode of doing violence to the feelings of the friends who stand over the grave, death might be divested of half its terrors, and its approach even hailed as a blessing by the majority of mankindby those, at least, who are weary of the world, whatever portion of it they may be. Is it not Johnson who has said, there is probably more pain in passing from youth to age, than from age to eternity?

Professor Hufeland, whose observations on this subject are worth all the essays that have lately obtained a temporary notoriety, and that too without any classical clap-traps or shreds and patches of ancient scholarship, has well observed in his work on longevity, "that many fear death less than the operation of dying. People (he says) form the most singular conception of the last struggle, the separation of the soul from the body, and the like. But this is all void of foundation. No man certainly ever felt what death is; and as