18 
KIDD’S OWN JOURNAL. 

stream to terminate in the dash of the tor- 
rent, and they found it was losing itself in the 
gentlest current. Nor does the calm partake 
of the sensitiveness of sickness. There was 
a swell in the sea, the day Collingwood 
breathed his last upon the element which had 
been the scene of his glory. Captain Thomas 
expressed a fear that he was disturbed by the 
tossing of the ship. ‘ No, Thomas,” he re- 
plied; “I am nowin a state in which nothing 
in this world can disturb me more; I am 
dying ; and I am sure it must be consolatory 
to you, and all who love me, to see how com- 
fortably I am coming to my end.” 
A second and common condition of the 
dying, is—to be lost to themselves and all 
around them in utter unconsciousness. Coun- 
tenance and gestures might in many cases 
suggest that, however dead to the external 
world, an interior sensibility still remained ; 
but we have the evidence of those whom 
disease has left at the eleventh hour, that 
while their supposed sufferings were pitied 
by their friends, existence was a blank. Mon- 
taigne, when stunned by a fall from his 
horse, tore open his doublet ; but he was en- 
tirely senseless, and only knew afterwards 
that he had done it from the information of 
his attendants. 

The delirium of fever is distressing to wit- 
* ness; but the victim awakes from it as from 
a heavy sleep, totally ignorant that he has 
passed days and nights tossing wearily and 
talking wildly. Perceptions which had oc- 
cupied the entire man, could hardly be ob- 
literated in the instant of recovery; or, if 
any man were inclined to adopt the solution, 
there is yet a proof that the callousness is 
real, in the unflinching manner in which bad 
sores are rolled upon that are too tender to 
bear touching when the sense is restored. 
Whenever there is insensibility, virtual death 
precedes death itself; and to die is to awake 
in another world. More usually the mind is 
ina state intermediate between activity and 
oblivion. Observers, unaccustomed to sit 
by the bed of death, readily mistake increas- 
ing languor for total insensibility ; but those 
who watch closely can distinguish that the 
ear, though dull, is not deaf—that the eye, 
though dim, is not yet sightless. 
When a bystander remarked of Dr. Wol- 
laston—that his mind was gone, the expiring 
philosopher made a signal for paper and 
pencil, wrote down some figures, and cast 
them up. The superior energy of his cha- 
racter was the principal difference between 
himself and thousands who die and give no 
sion; their faculties survive, so averse to 
even the faintest effort, and they barely tes- 
tify m languid and broken phrases that the 
torpor of the body more than keeps pace 
with the inertness of the mind. The same 
report is given by those who have advanced 
to the very border of the country from 
whence no traveller returns. Montaigne, 
after his accident, passed for a corpse; and 
the first feeble indications of returning life 
resembled some of the commonest symptoms 
of death. But his own feelings were those 
of a man who is dropping into the sweets of 
slumber, and his longing was towards blank 
rest, and not for recovery. ‘“‘ Methought,”’ 
he says, “my life hung only upon my own 
lips; and I shut my eyes to help to thrust it 
out, and took a pleasure in languishing and 
letting myself go.” 
In many of these instances, as in the cases 
of stupefaction, there are appearances which 
we have learnt to associate with suffering, 
because constantly conjoined with it. A 
cold perspiration bedews the skin, the breath- 
ing is harsh and labored; and sometimes, es- 
pecially in delicate frames, death is ushered 
in by convulsive movements, which look like 
a wrestling with an oppressive enemy. But 
they are signs of debility and a failing system, 
which have no relation to pain. 
There is hardly an occasion, when the’ 
patient fights more vehemently for life than 
in an attack of asthma; which in fact is a 
sufficiently distressing disorder before the 
sensibility is blunted and the strength sub- 
dued. But the determination is not to be 
judged by the beginning. Dr. Campbell, the 
well known Scotch professor, had a seizure 
which all but carried him off a few months 
before he succumbed tothe disease; acordial 
gave him unexpected relief, and his first 
words were to express astonishment at the 
sad countenance of his friends, because his 
own mind, he told them, was in such a state 
at the crisis of the attack, from the expecta- 
tion of immediate dissolution, that there was 
no other way to describe his feelings than by 
saying he was in rapture. Light indeed 
must have been the suffering as he gasped 
for breath; since physical agony, had it 
existed, would have quite subdued the men- 
tal ecstacy. 
Hard as it may be to control emotions 
with the very heart-strings ready to crack, 
pity demands an effort, in which the strong- 
est affection will be surest of success. The 
grief will not be more bitter in the end, that 
to keep it back had been the last service of 
love. Tears are a tribute, of which those 
who bestow them should bear all the cost. 
When Cavendish, the great chemist, per- 
ceived that his end drew near, he ordered 
his servant to retire, and not to return till a 
certainhour. Theservant came back to find 
his master dead. He had chosen to breathe 
out his soul in solitude and silence, and 
would not be distracted by the presence of 
man, since vain was his help. Everybody 
desires to smooth the bed of death; but 
unreflecting (we too often note the result), 

