Have you ever watched by a dying man, in cases of, what is called, a quiet death? For some time before dissolution, the soul is already shrouded in lethargic insensibility; no ray of intellect or affection, glances from the dim and sunken eye; there is just enough of life, to suspend dissolution. On the other hand, consciousness is generally accompanied by pain; and who that has ever suffered pain, will say, that it is a meet companion for the calm and solemn composure of that selfexamination, which requires our best, our undivided energies? Who that has ever witnessed the tossings of a convulsed frame, or heard the groans of a troubled spirit, can rest his hopes of repentance, and redemption, upon the feelings of such a tremendous season? It is with much truth, as well as pathos, that our funeral service instructs us to say, Oh holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge Eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee!'

You may think, possibly, that, in these awful moments, conscience may be awakened from its long slumber. Doubtless: yet, this may be an unnatural excitement, producing despair, instead of contrition; an excitement, such as are the workings of a galvanized corpse, compared with the motions of a healthy living body. You all know, that there is a basilisk power in an overwrought imagination; which precipitates the dizzy and bewildered mind towards the very object of its greatest horror. Similar effects may follow, from the

impulses of conscience terrified into frenzy, by the horrors of approaching judgment.

Would you then die the death of the righteous? Your surest and your easiest way, is to live the life of the righteous. Thus, and thus only, you shall be ready to go forth, and meet your Lord, at whatever hour his summons may arrive for you. And so, when it does arrive, will there be no misgivings, no trepidations, no reluctance. You will be endowed with a solemn, serene equanimity; your soul, as it is gradually disenthralled from its shackles, and its prison-house, will expatiate, in the freedom of anticipated immortality; and at the last, you shall be admitted into that eternal dwellingplace, where the Lord shall be your everlasting light, and your God, your glory.

ESSAY

ON

THE SUBJECT PROPOSED

BY

THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY,

WHETHER, AND HOW FAR, THE PURSUITS OF SCIENTIFIC, AND POLITE LITERATURE, ASSIST, OR OBSTRUCT, EACH OTHER.'

If we can direct the lights we derive from the exalted speculations of philosophy, upon the humbler field of the imagination, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back upon the severer sciences some of the graces and elegances of taste; without which, the greatest proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of something illiberal.'

Edmund Burke.

Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful.

261

ESSAY, &c.

AMONG the many errors of the understanding, by which the learned have been misled in their conclusions, or distracted in their attempts at more cautious investigation, few have been of greater injury to the cause of truth, than the mistake, of a concomitant for a cause; of a casual, for a necessary connection; and of a fortuitous contiguity in point of time, for some fixed and established relation in the great system of natural dependencies. Contemporary phenomena we accustom ourselves either to refer to one common principle of causation, or to attribute to one phenomenon, some degree of influence on the production of another: we are naturally pleased with the order of things to which we ourselves have given existence; and we veil our rashness in instituting analogies, under the specious appellations of love of simplicity,'' and a study to preserve unbroken the general harmony of nature.' An error of this kind, has, for a long time partially prevailed, relative to the subject proposed for discussion by the Academy: and, though, in itself, it by no means requires a