declared that he would not live over again a single week of his life, had it been allowed him.[2] Such was his opinion on the past; but so great is the cheering influence with which Hope irradiates the mind, that in looking forward to the future, he always talked with pleasure on the prospect of a long life. [2] Chamfort observes, that the writers on physics, natural history, physiology, and chemistry, have been generally men of a mild, even, and happy temperament, while the writers on politics, legislation, and even morals, commonly exhibited a melancholy and fretful spirit. It is to be expected that an inspection of the beauty and order of nature should affect the mind with peculiar pleasure.--_Gaieties and Gravities_. When he was in Scotland, Boswell told him that after his death, he intended to erect a memorial to him. Johnson, to whom the very mention of death was unpleasant, replied, "Sir, I hope to see your grand-children." On his death-bed he observed to the surgeon who was attending him, "_I want life_, you are afraid of giving me pain." It has been supposed that this question had been settled by the authority of Scripture. "Man is born to trouble," says Job, "as the sparks fly upward." In turning over a few pages more, we find ourselves in doubt again. "_The latter end of Job was more blessed than his beginning_; for he had 14,000 sheep, and 6,000 camels, and 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 she-asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters. So Job died being old and full of days." It may not be unpleasant to place before the reader the opinions of several celebrated men, on Life, that he may choose his side, and either like the bee or the spider, extract the poison or gather the honey. We will begin with Sterne, one who well knew the human heart. "What is the life of man? is it not to shift from side to side! from sorrow to sorrow!" "When I consider how oft we eat the bread of affliction, when one runs over the catalogue of all the cross reckonings and sorrowful items with which the heart of man is overcharged, 'tis wonderful by what hidden resources the mind is enabled to stand it out, and bear itself up, as it does, against the impositions laid upon our nature."--_T. Shandy_. "A man has but a bad bargain of it at the best."--_Chesterfield_. "No scene of human life but teems with mortal woe."--_Sir Walter Scott_. In opposition to these sentiments, Franklin, in writing on the death of a friend, gives us his opinion, "_It is a party of pleasure_, some take their seats first." And Lord Byron, describing Sunrise, in the second canto of _Lara_, says