the guests, who is called the _Auditor_ through the remainder of the performance, asserts, that death is an evil. This proposition Cicero immediately proceeds to refute, which naturally introduces a disquisition on the immortality of the soul—a subject which, in the pages of Cicero, continued to be involved in the same doubt and darkness that had veiled it in the schools of Greece. It is true, that in the ancient world some notion had been entertained, and by a few some hope had been cherished, that we are here only in the infancy of our existence, and that the grave might be the porch of immortality, and not the goal of our career. The natural love that we have for life, amidst all its miseries—the grief that we sometimes feel at being torn from all that is dear to us—the desire for posterity and for posthumous fame—the humiliating idea, that the thoughts which wander through eternity, should be the operations of a being destined to flutter for a moment on the surface of the earth, and then for ever to be buried in its bosom—all, in short, that is selfish, and all that is social in our nature, combined in giving importance to the inquiry, If the thinking principle was to be destroyed by death, or if that great change was to be an introduction to a future state of existence. Having thus a natural desire for the truth of this doctrine, the philosophers of antiquity anxiously devised arguments, which might justify their hopes. Sometimes they deduced them from metaphysical speculations—the spirituality, unity, and activity of the soul—sometimes from its high ideas of things moral and intellectual. Is it possible, they asked, that a being of such excellence should be here imprisoned for a term of years, only to be the sport of the few pleasures and the many pains which chequer this mortal life? Is not its future destination seen in that satiety and disrelish, which attend all earthly enjoyments—in those desires of the mind for things more pure and intellectual than are here supplied—in that longing and endeavour, which we feel after something above us, and perfective of our nature? At other times, they have found arguments in the unequal distribution of rewards and punishments; and in our sighs over the misfortunes of virtue, they have recognized a principle, which points to a future state of things, where that shall be discovered to be good which we now lament as evil, and where the consequences of vice and virtue shall be more fully and regularly unfolded, than in this inharmonious scene. They have then looked abroad into nature, and have seen, that if death follows life, life seemingly emanates from death, and that the cheerful animations of spring succeed to the dead horrors of winter. They have observed the wonderful changes that take place in some sentient beings—they have considered those which man himself has undergone—and, charmed by all these speculations, they have indulged in the pleasing hope, that our death may, like our