It is, I think, a healthy tendency that is leading men in our own generation to turn away as much as possible from the signs and the contemplation of death. The pomp and elaboration of funerals; protracted mournings surrounding us with the gloom of an ostentatious and artificial sorrow; above all, the long suspension of those active habits which nature intended to be the chief medicine of grief, are things which at least in the English-speaking world are manifestly declining. We should try to think of those who have passed away as they were at their best, and not in sickness or in decay. True sorrow needs no ostentation, and the gloom of death no artificial enhancement. Every good man, knowing the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its hour, will make it one of his first duties to provide for those he loves when he has himself passed away, and to do all in his power to make the period of bereavement as easy as possible. This is the last service he can render before the ranks are closed, and his place is taken, and the days of forgetfulness set in. In careers of riot and of vice the thought of death may have a salutary restraining influence; but in a useful, busy, well-ordered life it should have little place. It was not the Stoics alone who 'bestowed too much cost on death, and by their preparations made it more fearful.'[81] As Spinoza has taught, 'the proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live,' and as long as he is discharging this task aright he may leave the end to take care of itself. The great guiding landmarks of a wise life are indeed few and simple; to do our duty--to avoid useless sorrow--to acquiesce patiently in the inevitable. FOOTNOTES: [77] _The Tempest._ [78] _Measure for Measure._ [79] Garth. [80] _History of European Morals_, i. p. 203. The legend is related by Camden. [81] Bacon.