book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, Thus have I acted these were my thoughts-such was I. Power Eternal! Assemble round thy throne the innumerable throng of my fellow mortals. Let them listen to my confessions; let them blush at my depravity; let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose, with equal sincerity, the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man.” The death of this strange man was like his life; he died with a horrid lie on his lips, accompanied by the most impious appeal that man could make. 'Ah! my dear," said he to his wife, just before he expired, "how happy a thing it is to die, when one has no reason for remorse, or self-reproach!" And then, addressing himself to the Almighty, he said, "Eternal Being the soul that I am going to give thee back, is as pure, at this moment, as it was when it proceeded from thee: render it partaker of thy felicity." 3. HORACE WALPOLE. HORACE WALPOLE was in his day "the glass of fashion, and the mould of form," valuable for little besides his epistolary style, in the material in which his own nothingness is enclosed, as in amber, till it has acquired a certain conventional value. Rank, fortune, humour, were all his own; yet he lived for few things which were not frivolous, and maintained the contemptible character of a male gossip. What his thoughts of death were, the following passage from his letters will demonstrate :— "I am tired of the world, its politics, its pursuits, and its pleasures; but it will cost me some struggles before I submit to be tender and careful. Christ! can I ever submit to the regimen of old age? I do not wish to dress up a withered person, nor drag it about to public places; but to sit in one's room, clothed warmly, expecting visits from folks I do not wish to see, and tended and flattered by relations impatient for one's death! Let the gout do its worst as expeditiously as it can; it would be more welcome in my stomach than in my limbs." His letters, written at the end of life, some of which were to Miss Hannah More, show that, though occasionally much disgusted at life, religion exerted no influence whatever. Indeed, even in writing to that lady, he omitted no opportunity of satirizing both piety and its followers. Yet he confessed himself a disappointed man, though he could not forbear to jest at his own approaching dissolution. Living and dying, he was the same heartless and selfish voluptuary. "I shall be quite content," he writes, "with a sprig of rosemary,* thrown after me, when the parson of the parish commits my dust to dust!" 4. FREDERIC OF PRUSSIA. "FREDERIC of Prussia, died," says Zimmerman, "in a continued disbelief of revelation, and of the immortality of the soul." His will provided that his body should be buried near his dogs in his garden. 5. CARDINAL MAZARINE. "Give what thou wilt, without thee we are poor, THE minority and early days of Louis XIV., bore witness to the extensive power of Cardinal Mazarine. As a mere politician-regarding that character as unin *The symbolical language of the rosemary is remembrance; "I'll remember thee." Sprigs of it were often thrown upon the coffin when it had been lowered into the tomb or grave. fluenced by high and noble motives-he possessed great abilities. Death reached him in the zenith of his power; and, when his political ambition seemed to have grasped all which it desired, when consulted upon his case, Guenard, his physician, told him that it was only possible for him to live two months longer. He alone, whose whole heart and soul have been absorbed by the world, can imagine the despair with which Mazarine received the announcement. A few days after the sentence, he was observed to drag himself in his night-cap and gown along the gallery of his palace, and to mutter, as he looked at the splendid collection of pictures his wealth had amassed, "Must I quit all these ?"* Perceiving Brienne, his attendant, from whom the account is derived, he broke out, "Look at that Corregio!-this Venus of Titian!-that matchless Deluge of Caracci! Ah, my friend, I must quit them all! Farewell, dear pictures, that I loved so dearly, and that have cost me so much!” At another time, whilst in his easy chair, he was heard to murmur, Guenard has said it-Guenard has said it." One of his last amusements was cards, which were held for him by another, as his enfeebled hands refused to perform their office. When the time of his death drew near, be became most restless and uneasy, and was heard to say, with tears, "O, my poor soul! What will become of thee? Whither wilt thou go?" To the queen-dowager of France, he said, "Madam, your favours have undone me; were I to live again, I would be a monk rather than a courtier." His last hours were, however, marked by greater firmness. On the 7th of March, 1661, he received extreme unction, and took This passage will recall to the minds of many readers, Johnson's exclamation to Garrick, when the latter was showing to him the objects of taste with which his villa at Twickenham was beautified," Ah, David, David, these are the things that make a death-bed hard!" leave of the king and royal family. After this, he assembled his household, begged their pardon for his faults with a great appearance of humility, and employed himself during the rest of the day in religious devotion. Yet, though in his interview with the prince of Condé, whose mortal enemy he had been, he expressed himself with apparent freedom and affection, that prince afterward discovered that he had not uttered a word of truth. He ordered himself, though dying, to be rouged and dressed, and then taken once more into public, that he might receive the hypocritical compliments of his courtiers on his apparent recovery. Some of his last words expressed his conviction that his physicians had not understood his case, and he was heard to say, "They have killed me." The day he died, one of them having brought to him nourishment, he fixed his eyes upon him with an intent and piercing expression, as if he suspected him of having hastened his end; and his last confession was, that he had sinfully murmured against the means adopted for his cure. Such was the miserable end of one who had subjugated France to his will, and appeared, after many tremendous struggles, superior to all his enemies. Will earthly possessions satisfy? 6. LORD BYRON. "The bed, where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pains, by turns dismay'd."-GOLDSMITH. THE name of Lord Byron is as familiar as its associations are melancholy. His history was throughout peculiar, and its contrasts hideous. He had rank and genius; the latter was of a noble order, and was powerful alike in description and in passion, in pathos and in satire. His fame was sudden and resplendent; and although taste has already abated somewhat of its lustre, it was not in the main deceptive. The circumstances of his early life might claim our pity, if pity were not overpowered by the strong moral reprobation demanded by his deliberate errors. Irregular and petulant as a boy; debauched and outrageous as a youth; entering upon life with every accompaniment of riot on the one hand, and sad disappointment on the other; contracting marriage with as heartless a selfishness as ever disgraced humanity, and surrounded after it by all the irregularities of vice and entanglement the age of thirty saw him, "with all his household gods shivered around him;" separated from his wife-self-divorced from his country -a “Prometheus,” (to use his own title,) with all the vultures of conscience let loose upon his soul. His genius, which, properly nurtured, might have illuminated mankind, flared with a self-consuming fire. In the triumphs of his first success, he wrung from an admiring public, as piece after piece appeared, tributes of admiration never equalled; yet he ended his career by making his high powers instruments of the most bitter infidelity, the most caustic malice, and the most self-degrading buffoonery. His death was doubtless, in its remote cause, produced by habits of intoxication freely indulged, and by the otherwise severe regimen he instituted to preserve his Apollo-like beauty. Self-will had been the leading impulse of his life, and was his ruling passion at the last. He had been exposed after a debauch to inclement weather, and was overtaken by dangerous sickness. No persuasion could induce him to submit to the necessary remedies. In vain was early bleeding urged upon him; he persisted in his resistance to the remedy till it was too late. He died at Missolonghi, in Greece, April 19th, 1824. "It is with infinite pain," says one of his physicians, "I must state, that though I seldom left Lord Byron's |