It was indeed impossible for us not to feel the frequent necessity of deploring those we loved. We therefore thought that we perceived this principle operating when the evident influence of external causes, or some mysterious agency seemed to drive the noblest results of life, intellect and genius, from the philosopher and statesman, who had, by the diffusion of truth and resistance to arbitrary power, preserved the liberties, and aggrandized the happiness of nations; we thought we perceived their influence when imagination’s powers fled from the poet whose song had once almost conferred new life on the heroes of ancient times; we thought we perceived their influence when the phenomena of vital action disappeared in the body of the patriot hero in whom they had once developed the noblest specimen of that generous love of social life which induced him to devote his existence to his country’s weal; we thought we perceived their influence when those magic charms abandoned the lovely female whose powers had once excited from the philosopher those splendid epithets that ranked her with the other objects of his adoration, celestial truth and god-like genius—which had obtained even from the poet those wonderful strains that at once immortalized him and the object of his song—which had commanded, even in the hero, those glorious devotions which, for far too short a period, illustrated the ever memorable days of chivalry. When those eyes whose soft languor had fascinated every beholder, those cheeks where life had often spread the crimson veil of love—when these were gone, those eyes were dim and sunk, those cheeks were pale, those lips were livid, that bosom depressed, that form rigid and icy cold, when all had thus assumed the darkest and most frightful hues, had gradually lost cohesion and become one mass of horrible putrescence, whose infectious effluvia now threatened destruction almost welcome to those who once adored the animated being—it was scarcely possible to feel all this, and avoid the conclusion that life was a state of force. It was doubtless this unknown and imaginary power connecting the various phenomena of organic structure that gave origin to the idea of life. But that they are no state of force is proved by this, that while the only notion we have of them is motion—successive attraction and repulsion, electricity, fire &c. exhibit precisely corresponding phenomena, and the last of these was, I believe, on that single account, considered as the symbol of life and intellect by the great Zoroaster.