D'Israeli says that a clergyman who had the longest and largest beard of any Englishman in Elizabeth's reign, gave as a reason for wearing it the motive it afforded “that no act of his life might be unworthy the gravity of his appearance.” * * * * * FRAGMENT ON MORTALITY. When Fuller in his Pisgah Sight of Palestine, comes to the city of Aigalon, where Elon, Judge of Israel, was buried, “of whom nothing else is recorded save his name, time of his rule (ten years), and place of his interment; slight him not he says, because so little is reported of him, it tending much to the praise of his policy in preventing foreign invasions, and domestic commotions, so that the land enjoyed peace, as far better than victory, as health is to be preferred before a recovery from sickness. Yea, times of much doing are times of much suffering, and many martial achievements are rather for the Prince's honour, than the people's ease.” “To what purpose,” says Norris, “should a man trouble both the world's and his own rest, to make himself great? For besides the emptiness of the thing, the Play will quickly be done, and the Actors must all retire into a state of equality, and then it matters not who personated the Emperor, or who the Slave.” The Doctor's feelings were in unison with both these passages;—with the former concerning the quiet age in which it was his fortune to flourish; and with the latter in that it was his fortune to flourish in the shade. “It is with times,” says Lord Bacon, “as it is with ways; some are more up hill and down hill, and some are more flat and plain; and the one is better for the liver, and the other for the writer.” He assented also to the Christian-Platonist of Bemerton when he asked, “to what purpose should a man be very earnest in the pursuit of Fame? He must shortly die, and so must those too who admire him.” But nothing could be more opposed to his way of thinking than what follows in that philosopher,—“Nay, I could almost say, to what purpose should a man lay himself out upon study and drudge so laboriously in the mines of learning? He is no sooner a little wiser than his brethren, but Death thinks him ripe for his sickle; and for aught we know, after all his pains and industry, in the next world, an ideot, or a mechanic will be as forward as he.” In the same spirit Horace Walpole said in his old age, “What is knowledge to me, who stand on the verge, and must leave my old stores as well as what I may add to them,—and how little could that be!” When Johnson was told that Percy was uneasy at the thought of leaving his house, his study, his books—when he should die,—he replied—“a man need not be uneasy on these grounds, for as he will retain his consciousness, he may say with the Philosopher, _omnia mea mecum porto._”