
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 
19 

turns it rather to a bed of thorns. It is 
not always that sickness merges into the 
agony. The strained thread may break at 
last with asudden snap. This is by no means 
rare in consumption. Burke’s son, upon 
whom his father has conferred something of 
his own celebrity, heard his parents sobbing 
in another room at the aspect of an event 
they knew to be inevitable. He rose from 
his bed, joined his illustrious father, and en- 
deavored to engage him in a cheerful con- 
versation. Burke continued silent, choked 
with grief. His son again made an effort to 
console him. ‘Iam under no terror,” he 
said; ‘‘I feel myself better, and in spirits, 
and yet my heart flutters—I know not why.” 
Here a noise attracted his notice, and he ex- 
claimed, “Does it rain?—No; it is the 
rustling of the wind through the trees.” 
The whistling of the wind and the waving 
of the trees brought Milton’s majestic lines 
to his mind, and he repeated them with un- 
common grace and effect :-— : 
“His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters 
d blow, 
Breathe soft or low; and wave your tops, ye pines ; 
With every plant, in sign of worship, wave !” 
A second time he took up the sublime and 
melodious strain, and accompanying the 
action to the word, waved his own hand in 
token of worship, and sunk into the arms of 
his father—a corpse. Not a single sensation 
told him that in an instant he would stand 
in the presence of the Creator to whom his 
body was bent in homage, and whose praises 
still resounded from his lips. 
Commonly, the hand of death is felt but 
for one brief moment before the work is 
done. Yet a parting word, or an expression 
of prayer, in which the face and voice retain 
their composure, show that there is nothing 
painful in the warning. It was in this way 
that Boileau expired from the effects of 
dropsy. A friend entered the room where 
he was sitting, and the poet, in one and the 
same breath, bade him hail and farewell! 
“Good day and adieu!” said he; “it will be 
a very long adieu!” and instantly died. 
In sudden death, which is not preceded by 
sickness, the course of events is much the 
same—some expire in the performance of 
the ordinary actions of life, some with a half- 
completed sentence on their lips, some in the 
midst of a quiet sleep. Many die without a 
sound; many with a single sigh; many with 
merely a struggle and a groan. In other 
instances, there are.two or three minutes of 
contest and distress; and in proportion as 
the termination is distant from the commence- 
ment of the attack, there will be room for 
the ordinary pangs of disease. But, upon 
the whole, there can be no death less awful 
than the death which comes in the midst of | 


life, if it were not for the shock it gives the 
survivors, and the probability with most that 
it will find them unprepared. 
When there are only afew beats of the 
pulse, and a few heavings of the bosom, be- 
tween health and the grave, it can signify 
little whether they are the throbbings of pain, 
or the thrills of joy, or the mechanical move- 
ments of an unconscious frame. There is, 
then, no foundation for the idea that the pain 
of dying is the climax to the pain of disease ; 
for unless the stage of the agony is crossed 
at a stride, disease stupifies when it is about 
to kill. If the anguish of the sickness has 
been extreme, so striking from the contrast 
is the ease which supervenes, that, without 
even the temporary revival which distin- 
guishes the lightening before death, “ kind 
nature’s signal for retreat ” is believed to be 
the signal of the retreat of the disease. 
Pushkin, the Russian poet, suffered agony 
from a wound received in a duel. His wife, 
| deceived by the deep tranquillity which suc- 
ceeded, left the room with a countenance 
beaming with joy, and exclaimed to the 
physician, ‘‘ You see he is to live; he will 
not die.’’ ‘ But at this moment,” says the 
narrative, “the last process of vitality had 
already begun.” 
Where the symptomsare those of recovery, © 
there is in truth more pain to be endured 
than when the issue is death—for sickness 
does not relinquish its hold in relaxing its 
grasp. In the violence which produces 
speedy insensibility, the whole of the down- 
ward course is easy, compared to the subse- 
quent ascent. When Montaigne was stunned, 
he passed from stupor to a dreamy Elysium. 
But when returning life had thawed the 
numbness engendered by the blow, then it 
was that the pains got hold of him which 
imagination pictures as incident to death. 
Cowper, on reviving after his attempt to hang 
himself, thought he was in hell; and those 
who are taken senseless from the water and 
afterwards recovered, re-echo the sentiment, 
though they may vary the phrase. 
This is what we should upon reflection ex- 
pect. The body is quickly deadened and 
slowly restored; and from the moment cor- 
poreal sensitiveness returns, the throes of the 
still disordered functions are so many efforts 
of pain. In so far as it isa question of 
bodily suffering, death is the lesser evil of 
the two. 
We come then to the fact, that to die 
means nothing more than to lose the vital 
power ; and it is the vital power which is the 
medium of communication between the soul 
and body. In proportion as the vital power 
decreases, we lose the power of sensation and 
of consciousness; and we cannot lose life 
without at the same time, or rather before, 

