birth, be the introduction to a new state of existence. But all these fond desires—all these longings after immortality, were insufficient to dispel the doubts of the sage, or to fill the moralist with confidence and consolation. The wisest and most virtuous of the philosophers of antiquity, and who most strongly indulged the hope of immortality, is represented by an illustrious disciple as expressing himself in a manner which discloses his sad uncertainty, whether he was to be released from the tomb, or for ever confined within its barriers. In the age of Cicero, the existence of a world beyond the grave was still covered with shadows, clouds, and darkness. “Whichsoever of the opinions concerning the substance of the soul be true,” says he, in his first Tusculan Disputation, “it will follow, that death is either a good, or at least not an evil—for if it be brain, blood, or heart, it will perish with the whole body—if fire, it will be extinguished—if breath, it will be dissipated—if harmony, it will be broken—not to speak of those who affirm that it is nothing; but other opinions give hope, that the vital spark, after it has left the body, may mount up to Heaven, as its proper habitation.” Cicero then proceeds to exhaust the whole Platonic reasoning for the soul’s immortality, and its ascent to the celestial regions, where it will explore and traverse all space—receiving, in its boundless flight, infinite enjoyment. From his system of future existence, Cicero excludes all the gloomy fables feigned of the descent to Avernus, the pale murky regions, the sluggish stream, the gaunt hound, and the grim boatman. But even if death is to be considered as the total extinction of sense and feeling, our author still denies that it should be accounted an evil. This view he strongly supports, from a consideration of the insignificance of those pleasures of which we are deprived, and beautifully illustrates, from the fate of many characters distinguished in history, who, by an earlier death, would have avoided the greatest ills of life. Had Metellus died sooner, he would not have laid his sons on the funeral pile—had Pompey expired, when the inhabitants of all Italy were decked with wreaths and garlands, as testimonies of joy for his restoration to health from the fever with which he was seized in Campania, he would not have taken arms unprepared for the contest, nor fled his home and country; nor, having lost a Roman army, would he have fallen on a foreign shore by the sword of a slave(432). He completes these illustrations by reference to his own misfortunes; and the arguments which he deduced from them, received, in a few months, a strong and melancholy confirmation.—“Etiam ne mors nobis expedit? qui et domesticis et forensibus solatiis ornamentisque privati, certe, si ante occidissemus, mors nos a malis, non a bonis abstraxisset.”