PROLEGOMENA. Ixxxiii 



by one ; and all remains still in your chamber : 

 yes, the awful stillness of death : the lights are 

 all withdrawn, save the pale glimmering of 

 the lamp burning before some holy image of Our 

 Lady in your chamber ; and as the passing bell 

 of the nearest church begins to break the silence 

 of the night with its deep and portentous tones, 

 your confessor enters with a crucifix in his hand, 

 and presenting it to you, reminds you that this 

 world, with all its vain pomps and follies, is gone 

 from you, and asks you to confess your sins for 

 the last time. You now ask yourself whether 

 you have lived for Heaven or for the World ? 

 for the End of Man, or for the malicious mockery 

 of the Devil ? How sincerely now do you wish 

 you had lived the austere lives of the Catholic 

 Saints ! How vain appear the phantasms of 

 worldly vanity, reflected in the magic lantern of 

 that acute and painful memory of the past, which 

 so often presents terrifying images to the careless 

 worldling at the hour of death ! How do you 

 now praise the mortifications of the hermit, or 

 wish one month only could be spared to you to 

 meditate, even in the cloister of the monk, on the 

 eternal years which you are about to enter, and to 

 prepare for the judgment that precedes them. 

 What would you not give for a day on the pillar 

 itself of St. Simeon Stylites, to condemn the 

 spectacles of this great amphitheatre of delusions 



