! £793. | letter from Senex, 17 
are formed by an instinctive bias to wilh to preserve. 
I looked forward with a kind of solemn serenity to 
the near approach of that awful scene which await- 
eth all mankind. My physician, alarmed tor a life 
which his parriality had rendered dear to him, pufh- 
ed me away; make haste said he, before the ap- 
proach of winter fly to some warmer region, where 
the chilling blasts of December may not overpower 
your weakly frame. I hesitated; for whither to’ go 
I knew not—.No daughter was left to cheer the eve- 
ning of life, with those tender cares which it so 
much becomes her to minister to a father. To go 
.in the state of health I then experienced to a distant 
region among strangers, to me appeared a tafk more 
frightfulto encounter than death itself. Suffer methen, 
O my friend, I said, at least to diein peace. The ut- 
most that could be expected from all your anxious care 
and {kill would be only to prolong for a few moments 
more that brittle thread, which soon at all events 
must break. What avails it whether this fhall take 
place to day or tomorrow, or some months, or even 
years hence? All that life is worth the withing fon 
is gone, and were it not for the ideal pleasure of hol- 
ding converse at times with those who have gone 
before, and thus exalting the mind to a degree of 
happy enthusiasm, | fhould not have spirits to con- 
_ verse even with you; for all would then be a set- 
tled gloom, without one spark of day. Suffer me 
then to close my days in peace. and to indulge the 
sweet idea that when the scene is finally closed, my 
body fhall be deposited by you in the same grave 
with those I loved. 
VOL, xvii. y ie 
