However we may reason, however we may decry these views, as savage, impracticable, unnatural and undesirable, the fact is, that we all feel alike upon this subject. The thousands in a Roman amphitheatre only evinced a trait, that belongs to our common nature, when they instantly, and without consulting each other, gave the signal to save that gladiator, who most clearly manifested cool self-possession and contempt of death. After witnessing the execution of a criminal, who shows courage, the spectators go away describing, with animated gesture, and in terms of admiration, the fearlessness of the fellow the moment before his death. We all speak with unmingled satisfaction of the circumstance, in the death of our friends, that they departed in the conscious dignity of self-possession and hope. All readers are moved with one sensation, as they read the record of the noble trait in the character of Cæsar, gracefully folding himself in his mantle, after he had received so many mortal thrusts. Few of us hear unmoved of the old English patriot, who requested the executioner to support him up the steps to the scaffold, adding that he would shift for himself to get down; or of the other, who cried, as he stooped his head to the block, _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_! If I recollect, it is Silliman, who gives the affecting notice of the last hours of the duke of Richmond, the late governor general of Canada. Invested with all conceivable circumstances to render life desirable, he was bitten by a favorite dog in a rabid state; and died, in the most excruciating tortures, of the terrible hydrophobia. When the horrible paroxysm was felt by him to be approaching, he was accustomed to nerve his sinking courage by these words; ‘Henry, remember, that none of your ancestors were cowards.’ I give the trait from recollection, but have heard substantially the same account from other sources. This is the secret of the perverse general admiration of warriors, and heroes, and great generals. It is this principle in its blindness, which finds a niche of favor in so many hearts for duellists. In a word, intrepidity, deny it who may, is the trait which finds more universal favor with human nature in general than any other. Why? Because we are weak and frail beings, exposed to innumerable pains and dangers; and the quality we most frequently need, is courage. Without it life is a living death, a long agony of fear. With it, we die but once, enduring at the most but a momentary pang, never anticipated, never embittering a moment in advance with imaginary suffering.