THE DYING MONARCH. 57 



sensation may be different, but it is not better ; 

 and let a man be but hungry enough, and give 

 him something to appease that hunger, and all the 

 cooks that " the devil ever sent" to mar Heaven's 

 bounty can give no more enjoyment. So also in 

 drinks wines have their gusto, and other pota- 

 tions their exhilaration ; but " Adam's wine," as it 

 wells living from the rock, free from foreign sub- 

 stances, and showing every gem of the casket in 

 each drop, is, in truth, and will remain " the 

 liquor of life." The weary, the fainting, and the 

 dying, call not for burgundy, or champaigne, or 

 tokay ; the longing of their heart, the hope of 

 their recovery, or the alleviation of their anguish 

 is "water," water clear from the fountain, or 

 fresh from the cistern. Thus we see that, even in 

 those cases in which art and luxury have done the 

 most, human nature, when it comes to the hour of 

 tribulation to the moment of peril to the article 

 of strife with nothingness clings to the freshness 

 and simplicity of nature. And it is even so in 

 every thing. When cold sweat bedews the tem- 

 ples of the monarch when artery and vein have 

 forsaken each other, and the curdling fluid is breed- 

 ing corruption in the little capillary tubes between 

 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, 



