None die to be forgotten who deserve to be remembered. Even the fame for which some are ardent to sacrifice their lives, enjoyed early at that crisis of existence we call _success_, will in most cases change the desire for renown into a necessity, and stimulate the mind to the lowest motive but one, ambition,--possibly, to emulation, the lowest of all. Fame is valuable simply as the test of excellence; and there is a certain kind of popularity, sudden alike in its rise and subsidency, which deserves not the other and lasting name, for it fails to soothe that intellectual conscience which a great writer has declared to exist equally with the moral conscience. After all, it is a question whether fame is as precious to the celebrated during their lifetime as it is to those who love them, or who are attached to them by interest. There are persons who die and are forgotten, when their exit from the stage of human affairs is a source of advantage to their survivors. Witness those possessed of large fortunes, which they have it in their power to bequeath, and over whose dwellings of mortality vigilant relations hover like the carrion-fowl above the dying battle-steed. I remember a good story to this effect, in which a lady and gentleman took a grateful vow to pic-nic annually, on the anniversary of his death, at the tomb of a relation who had greatly enriched them. They did so, actually, _once_; succeeding years saw them no more at the solemn tryst. Even as to those who have excelled in art, or portrayed in language the imaginative side of life, it may be that their works abide and they not be recognized in them, that their words may be echoed in many tongues while the writer is put out of the question almost as entirely as he who carved the first hieroglyph on the archaic stone. It will ever be found, whether in works or words, that what touches the heart rather than what strikes the fancy, what draws the tear rather than excites the smile, will embalm the memory of the man of genius. But of all posthumous distinctions the noblest is that awarded to the philanthropist; even the meed of the man of science, which consists in the complete working of some great discovery skilfully applied, falls short of the reward of those who have contributed their utmost to the physical improvement and social elevation of man,--from the munificent endowment whose benefits increase and multiply in each succeeding generation, to the smallest seed of charity scattered by the frailest hand, as sure as the strong to gather together at the harvest its countless sheaves. To fill a niche in a heart, or a niche in each of a thousand hearts,--_either_ a holier place than that of the poet, who lives in the imagination he renders restless, or that of the hero, who renders the mind more restless still for his suggestion of the glory which may surround a name, a glory rather to be dreaded than desired,--too often, in such cases, must evil