Essays on Life 



no one can be sure that it may not fall to him 

 or her even at the eleventh hour. Money 

 and immortality come in such odd unaccount- 

 able ways that no one is cut off from hope. 

 We may not have made either of them for 

 ourselves, but yet another may give them to 

 us in virtue of his or her love, which shall illu- 

 mine us for ever, and establish us in some 

 heavenly mansion whereof we neither dreamed 

 nor shall ever dream. Look at the Doge 

 Loredano Loredani, the old man's smile upon 

 whose face has been reproduced so faithfully 

 in so many lands that it can never henceforth 

 be forgotten would he have had one hun- 

 dredth part of the life he now lives had he not 

 been linked awhile with one of those heaven- 

 sent men who know die cosa e amor ? Look 

 at Rembrandt's old woman in our National 

 Gallery ; had she died before she was eighty- 

 three years old she would not have been living 

 now. Then, when she was eighty-three, im- 

 mortality perched upon her as a bird on a 

 withered bough. 



I seem to hear some one say that this is a 



mockery, a piece of special pleading, a giving 



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