74 THE EYE, THE EAR, AND THE HAND 



to the freshness and simplicity of nature. And it ia 

 even so in every thing. When cold sweat bedews 

 the temples of the monarch when artery and vein 

 have forsaken each other, and the curdling fluid is 

 breeding corruption in the little capillary tubes be- 

 tween when the heart's feeble pulse is flung back 

 upon it by the dying vessels, and it is about to be 

 broken by its very strength when the lungs will 

 no longer remove the charcoal, but make, as it were, 

 the fire of life to smoulder in its own ashes when 

 the currentless throat begins to be choked up by its 

 own refuse when the angel of death stands ready 

 to loosen the " silver cord," and break the " wheel 

 at the cistern, and the pitcher at the fountain," 

 what then recks the monarch for his state and his 

 diadems ! Cast aside that sceptre, it is a bawble ; 

 doff that crown, it is nothing; rend away the velvet 

 and the tinsel, they are trash ; remove that coverlet 

 of satin, it is a burden : give him the fresh air of 

 heaven the first draught of nature that he drew 

 so that the king may die easily and in peace ; free 

 the monarch of all the trappings of his grandeur 

 so that the spirit of the man may mount in triumph 

 to its God. 



Our other organs of observation, the eye, the ear, 

 and the hand, though in the last case we make the 

 hand a tyrant, by appropriating in language to it a 

 faculty which really belongs to the whole fibrous or 

 muscular part of our frame, admit of more improve- 

 ment by cultivation ; and their improvement by cul- 

 tivation is like that of all other natural things plant 

 them in the right soil, and keep them from weeds, 

 and they will grow of themselves. We cannot ana- 

 lyze the process of tasting so as to find any thing 

 intermediate between the sapid food and the sapent 

 palate ; and though we know that scent is wafted to 

 a distance through the air, while taste is not, we can 

 discover no medium between the delighting flower 

 and the delighted organ. In the one of those cases, 



