Cellini opens his autobiography with a placid record of the enjoyment of his present lot, in life’s decline, in contrast with the storms and turmoil of his previous course. We read of James Watt, that not until he had reached what is termed the grand climacteric of man’s life did he know real freedom from bodily infirmities; and that his spirits became more equable as the principal causes of his anxiety and occasional depression were removed; so that although he was destined to be one of those “who are so strong that they come to fourscore years,” his strength even then, while it could scarcely be termed “labour,” was certainly very far from “sorrow.” The cloud which had so long hung over him was gently lifted up, and the curtain parted, to disclose a happier scene. “It is curious that even physical ease and enjoyment should come so late; but so it was. The term which commenced with his release from the evils of active business was a serene and golden time, in which he found repose”—with the softening retrospect of a struggle past and a victory won. John Galt, in “The Entail,” exemplifies a kindred experience in the widow Walkinshaw, whose deliverance from an all but lifelong thraldom, late in the day as it came, yet came in time enough to “allow the original brightness of her mind to shine out in the evening with a serene and pleasing lustre.” Dr. Boyd quotes the dying speech of a poor English day labourer, than which, he affirms, few sentences ever touched him more with their hopeless pathos: “Wut wi’ faeth, and wut wi’ the earth goin’ round the sun, and wut wi’ the railways all a-whuzzing and a-buzzing, I’m clean muddled, confoozled, and bet!” It is Stephen Blackpool again in spirit, and to the letter. With that sentence the dying man is said to have feebly turned to the wall, and spoken no more. “Well, let us hope that light came at the evening-time upon that blind, benighted way.” Among the dying words of Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, honourably known by her “Memoirs of Port Royal,” and other works, the remark is preserved that she had often in her life been inclined to occupy herself with the prospect close at hand, from finding the bleak, hard outline of the eternal hills cold and barren to her sight; but that, as she drew nearer, God’s mercy made His light to shine full upon them, so that she could now perceive they were covered with magnificent trees of the forest, and were rich in fruit and flowers far more pleasant than those close at hand, and yet a continuation of them.