It was on, and constituted a part of, the tenement known by the name of the Meeting-house; then it was leased to the church, then it was purchased by the church. It was known in Southampton two hundred years ago. It is now a fountain sealed, but still it is known, and proudly the pastor says, “Our father Isaac gave us this well, and drank thereof, himself and his children.”[44] Watts’ Well is no inapt symbol or emblem of Watts’ life and labours. Even lost to sight, sealed over, its springs still pour along their refreshing, cooling, and transparent streams; nor have the crowds who hurry thoughtlessly by power to interfere with the useful freshness of its pure blessings. “The last days are the best witnesses for a man.” “Blessed,” says old Robert Harris, “shall he be that so lived that he was desired, and so died that he was missed.” Isaac Watts illustrated in a remarkable manner power in weakness. [Illustration] CHAPTER XV. Death and Burial. He died in 1748, at the age of seventy-four, in ripe years, and hoary with the honours of holiness. We are dependent upon his friend and biographer, Dr. Gibbons, for almost all that we know of his last days and hours, but it is very pleasant to find that the author of “The World to Come” himself went down to the grave with all the calmness and confidence which the words he has uttered have so often imparted to others in the outlook towards the better country. He says, “It is a glory to the Gospel when we can lie down with courage in hope of its promised blessings; dying with faith and fortitude is a noble conclusion of a life of zeal and service.” “Death in the course of nature,” he says, “as well as by the hands of violence, hath always something awful and formidable in it; flesh and blood shrink and tremble at the appearance of a dissolution; but death is the last enemy of all the saints, and when a Christian meets it with sacred courage he gives that honour to the Captain of his salvation which the saints in glory can never give, and which we can never repeat; it is an honour to our common faith when it overcomes the terrors of death, and raises the Christian to a song of triumph in the view of the last enemy; it is a new crown put upon the head of our Redeemer, and a living cordial put into the hands of mourning friends in our dying hour when we can take leave of them with holy fortitude, rejoicing in the salvation of Christ.”