“There is indeed a great deal of seeming difference betwixt the outward conditions of life amongst men. Shall the rich and honourable and beautiful and healthful go in together, under the same name, with the baser and unhappier part, the poor, wretched sort of the world, who seem to be born for nothing but sufferings and miseries? At least, hath the wise no advantage beyond the fools? Is all grass? Make you no distinction? No; _all is grass_, or if you will have some other name, be it so; once this is true, that all flesh is grass; and if that glory which shines so much in your eyes must have a difference, then this is all it can have--it is but the flower of that same grass; somewhat above the common grass in gayness, a little comelier and better apparelled than it, but partaker of its frail and fading nature; it hath no privilege nor immunity that way; yea, of the two, is the less durable, and usually shorter lived; at the best, it decays with it--_The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away_.” Yes, grass and its flower--loveliness, might, wisdom: Helen of Troy shared the fate of the meanest weed; Julius Cæsar and Napoleon lie with the rank and file; Solomon in his glorious wisdom is at last now equalled with those lilies of the field, that grass which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven. We in the lower rank, we mere grass of the field, look at and admire the glory above us, the flower of the grass, the choice gifts of intellect, of power, of beauty: but even as we gaze, and before the scythe can come, or the sun can wither it, we miss it--“The flower thereof fadeth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth”: “The wind passeth over it, and it is gone. And the place thereof shall know it no more.” “The instances are not few, of those who have on a sudden fallen from the top of honour into the foulest disgraces, not by degrees coming down the stair they went up, but tumbled down headlong. And the most vigorous beauty and strength of body, how doth a few days’ sickness, or, if it escape that, a few years’ time, blast that flower!” And, sadder still, we must feel it to be, the ornaments of the mind are as short-lived; and we watch, with the keenest regret, great intellects quenched by decay or death, and minds that are the most stored with knowledge and learning cut off in a day.