The "Arcadia" was, according with the intention thus expressed, not the only memorial of the loving sympathy of the Countess of Pembroke and her brother. In addition to their joint translation of the Psalter, Sir Philip, at the time of his death, had almost completed a translation from the French of a work by his friend Philip de Mornay Du Plessis on "The True Use of the Christian Religion." This was completed and published a few months after the death of Sir Philip. The intimacy of her brother with Du Plessis doubtless induced the Countess also to study his works, which so much commended themselves to her that, some years later, she translated and published "A Discourse of Life and Death." The following passage from the preface, written by the Countess, affords a pleasant illustration of her prose writings, and at the same time is strikingly suggestive of her thoughtful character:-- "It seems to me strange," she writes, "and a thing much to be marvelled, that the labourer to repose himself hasteneth, as it were, the course of the sun; that the mariner rows with all his force to attain the port, and with a joyful cry salutes the descried land; that the traveller is never quiet nor content till he be at the end of his voyage; and that we in the meanwhile, tied in this world to a perpetual task, tost with continual tempest, tired with a rough and cumbersome way, cannot yet see the end of our labour but with grief, nor behold our port but with tears, nor approach our home and quiet abode but with horror and trembling. This life is but a Penelope's web, wherein we are always doing and undoing; a sea open to all winds, which, sometime within, sometime without, never cease to torment us; a weary journey through extreme heats and colds, over high mountains, steep rocks and thievish deserts. And so we term it, in weaving this web, in rowing at this oar, in passing this miserable way. Yet, lo! when Death comes to end our work; when she stretcheth out her arms to pull us into port; when, after so many dangerous passages and loathsome lodgings, she would conduct us to our true home and resting-place; instead of rejoicing at the end of our labour, of taking comfort at the sight of our land, of singing at the approach of our happy mansion, we would fain (who would believe it?) retake our work in hand, we would again hoist sail to the wind, and willingly undertake our journey anew. No more then remember we our pains; our ship-wrecks and dangers are forgotten; we fear no more the travails and the thieves. Contrariwise, we apprehend death as an extreme pain, we doubt it as a rock, we fly it as a thief. We do as little children, who all the day complain, and when the medicine is brought them, are no longer sick; as they who all the week long run up and down the streets with pain of the teeth, and, seeing the barber coming to pull them, out, feel no more pain. We fear more the cure than the disease, the surgeon than the pain.