The term is long enough for all we have to learn. Madame de Sevigné said sportively, that she should be a very wise person if she could but live about two hundred years: _je tâche tous les jours à profiter de mes reflexions; et si je pouvois vivre seulement deux cents ans, il me semble que je serois une personne bien admirable._ This the Doctor thought might hold good in the case of Madame de Sevigné herself, and of all other persons who regarded the acquirement of information as an amusement, or at most an accomplishment; “One small head might carry all they knew,” though their lives should be prolonged to the length of antediluvian old age. But in his opinion it would be otherwise with those who devoted themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, for the purpose of storing their own minds, and enabling themselves to instruct their fellow creatures. For although the mind would retain its faculties unimpaired for a length of time in proportion to the greater length of life, it by no means follows that its capacity would be enlarged. Horace Walpole lived forty years after he had said “my mould has taken all its impressions, and can receive no more. I must grow old upon the stock I have.” It is indeed highly probable that the most industrious students for some time before they reach the confines of senility forget as much as they learn. A short life is long enough for making us wise to salvation, if we will but give our hearts to the wisdom which is from above: and this is the one thing needful. There are some however who in their eulogistic and extravagant lamentations seem to have thought no lease long enough for the objects of their admiration. A certain John Fellows published an elegy on the death of the Reverend John Gill, D.D. This learned Doctor in Dissent died at a good old age; nevertheless the passionate mourner in rhyme considered his death as a special mark of the Almighty's displeasure, and exclaimed How are the mighty fallen! Lord when will Thine anger cease? The great the learned Gill Now pale and breathless lies! Upon which a reviewer not improperly remarked that without dwelling upon the _presumption_ of the writer he could not but notice the _folly_ of thus lamenting as though it were an untimely stroke, the natural departure of a venerable old man of near eighty. “Was this,” said he, “sufficient cause for raising such an outcry in Zion, and calling on her sons and daughters to weep and wail as if the Day of Judgement were come.” Nothing however in former times excited so great a sensation in the small world of Noncons as the death of one of their Divines. Their favorite poet Dr. Watts, wished when the Reverend Mr. Gouge died that he could make the stones hear and the rocks weep, And teach the Seas and teach the Skies Wailings and sobs and sympathies.