Clarke, one of the coolest of observers, is very remarkable on this point. In his life, by Dr. Lettsom, the latter thus gives us a sketch of a conversation in which the two were engaged :

"Dr. Lettsom said, 'Of all that I have seen restored, or questioned afterwards, I never found one who had the smallest recollection of anything that passed, from the moment they went under water till the time in which they were restored to life and thought.' Dr. Clarke answered Dr. L.: 'I knew a case to the contrary.' 'Did you, indeed?' 'Yes, Dr. L.; and the case was my own. I was once drowned.' And then he related the circumstances, and, after a detailed account, said, 'Now, I aver, 1st. That in being drowned, I felt no pain. 2d. That I did not, for a single moment, lose my consciousness. 3d. I felt indescribably happy, and, though dead as to the total suspension of all the functions of life, yet I felt no pain in dying; and, I take for granted, from this circumstance, those who die by drowning feel no pain, and that probably it is the easiest of all deaths. 4th. That I felt no pain until once more exposed to the action of the atmospheric air, and then I felt great pain and anguish in returning to life, which anguish, had I continued under water, I should have never felt. 5th. That animation must have been totally suspended from the time I must have been under water, which time might be, in some measure, ascertained by the distance the mare was from the place of my submersion, which was at least half a mile, and she was not, when I first observed her, making any speed.""

§ 170. Cowper, in those melancholy memoirs which bear

witness at once to so much misery and so much hope, speaks of an attempt at suicide, which was frustrated after he became insensible, in which he could not recollect any particular pain. Lord Bacon gives us an anecdote to the same effect; and Sir Benjamin Brodie adds the weight of his great experience and eminent sagacity.*

§ 171. Still more important than this is the gradual preparation of mind by sorrow and by old age. It is here that death, as well as pain, may be taken as the test by which the real value of religion is discovered. When death comes into the house purely human comforts are blasted, and turn with blackened face upon him who puts in them his trust. It is otherwise with religion, for then even the smoky chimney-wall becomes the panel on which are spread pictures which, be they myths or not, are fraught with the greatest loveliness and peace. It is under such influences, and in such scenery, that we best see the sweetness of the preparation by which the believer is made fit for death. Long illness, which, in our blindness, we cannot explain, but which tones the mind for the awful moment; old age, cutting away cord after cord binding the present to the past; affliction and sorrow, so subtly dividing the very sinews of the heart; the removal of objects of love to that home above where the eye of the dying man sees a treasure dearer than all below, these things come to take from the parting moment nearly all its terror. For, says Lord Bacon, "death comes graciously to those who sit in darkness, or lie heavily bur

* See ante, & 18.

dened with grief and irons,-to desolate widows, pensive prisoners, and deposed kings: to all such death is a redeemer, and the grave a place of retirement and rest." Or, as the same idea is expressed by a late thoughtful writer :

I am footsore and very weary,

But I travel to meet a friend.

The way is long and dreary,

But I know that it soon must end.

He is traveling fast like the whirlwind,
And though I creep slowly on,
We are drawing nearer, nearer,
And the journey is almost done!

Through the heat of many summers,
Through many a spring-time rain,
Through long autumns and weary winters
I have hoped to meet him, in vain.

On the day of my birth he plighted
His kingly word to me:-

I have seen him in dreams so often,
That I know what his smile must be.

I have toiled through the sunny woodland,
Through fields that basked in the light,
And through the lone paths in the forest.
I crept in the dead of night.

I will not fear at his coming,

Although I must meet him alone;
He will look in my eyes so gently,
And take my hand in his own.

Like a dream all my toil will vanish,
When I lay my head on his breast;
But the journey is very weary,

And he only can give me rest!

§ 172. Add to this a Christian hope, be it really true or be it not,-view this hope as a mere temporal alleviator,and then see how still more the path brightens. And, in this view, take the following lines, not as Christian poetry, but as the type of a psychological phenomenon, and compare them with the expression, beautiful as that expression is, of merely the stoical submission which has been just described :

One sweetly solemn thought

Comes to me o'er and o'er

I'm nearer home to-day

Than I ever have been before.

Nearer my Father's house,

Where the many mansions be;

Nearer the great white throne,

Nearer the jasper sea;

Nearer the bound of life,

Where we lay our burdens down;

Nearer leaving the cross,

Nearer gaining the crown.

e1. They are the incidents of an intermediate stage in a series of progressive advances from chaos to final perfection.

§ 173. Taking the whole scheme of geological history, we find that such a series of advances has been made from the earliest point to which that history goes back. The ad

vance, it is true, has not been equal and regular, nor do its successive eras melt into each other as they move on, but rather, as in a panorama, landscape after landscape is separately unrolled, leaving a pause between each, so each of these grand periods of cosmical progress begins and terminates as a unit, leaving a pause to divide it from its successor. But while this is the case, the advance from period to period is unequivocal, though this advance is one not of development but of a specific new introduction. We have the period of inorganic matter. We have the period when a colorless and pulpy vegetation scarce laid claim to organic life under the mist-shroud that encompassed it. We have, separated from this by an appreciable parenthesis, the period of rich and juicy cone-bearing ferns, and of the tortoises and fish-monsters which crowded the adjacent friths and lagoons. We have the period of giant mammalia, such as compose the dynasty now found in Nebraska, hemmed in by impassable barriers at both its formation and its extinction. Suppose, as has already been asked, it should be inquired for what purpose does this vast and luxurious vegetation of the second of these periods exist? Is it not a positive excrescence, and is not the rapid succession of animal deposit by which death manures these immense growths, in itself a defect and an evil? Countless centuries afterwards, the iron forges, the coal mines, and the industrial interests, which time puts in motion, answer the question by saying that the world is moving on in a series of progressive advances, each of which is the base from which a successor of a higher grade takes its start. Such being the case, and the scheme heretofore having been unbroken,