The dreams of men as to what they desire beyond the grave are infinitely varied, from Nirvana to Valhalla; and nothing is to be said, so far as he himself is concerned, respecting a man who wishes it to be written on his tombstone that he “From Nature’s temperate feast rose satisfied, Thanked Heaven that he had lived and that he died,” except this,--that his choice of eternal sleep betrays the fact _that there is no one in this world or the next whom he loves well enough to wish to be awakened to meet him again_. Of course, a man may have abundance of kindly and dutiful sentiments for his relatives and friends, and yet (thinking they will do well enough without him) be satisfied to quit them for ever. But I cannot believe that any one who has ever lost the object of the higher and more absorbing human affection, or who leaves behind him in dying one united to him by such transcendent love, can fail passionately to desire immortality. He may _resign_ himself through philosophy or religion (if his religion take the strange and rare form of belief in God and disbelief in a life to come) to see his beloved one no more. But not to _desire_ to meet, at any cost of unwelcome ages of life, the being we profess to love supremely, seems to be a contradiction in terms. Were there to loom before us worlds to climb, and centuries of labor, we would surely thankfully go through them all to reach the hour when we shall say, “Soul of my soul, I shall meet thee again! And with God be the rest.” But because a loveless man may, without blame, be content to let death drop a final curtain on his consciousness, it is quite another matter for him to be equally placidly resigned to the extinction of the hopes of others, who have had no such feast of life as he, or who yearn for the renewal of affection hereafter. As I have elsewhere attempted to show, in a little parable, such resignation _on behalf of other people_ is very much like that of Dives,[13] who, having fared sumptuously, should be contented to let Lazarus starve.