When the Northern Indian is stretched on the torture, even amidst his agonies, an inspired combination of belief and hope presents him with vivid pictures of the blessed regions of the Kitchi Manitou. The faithful Mussulman, in the agonies of death, feels assured that his enchanted sight is blessed by the beautiful houris in Mahomet’s paradise. The Runic warriors also, as the Icelandic chronicles record in their epitaphs, when mortally wounded in battle, “fall, laugh, and expire;” and in this expiration, like the dying warriors of Homer, predict the fate of their enemies. As the venom of the serpent curdled the blood in the veins of Regner Lodbrog, the Danish king, he exclaimed with ecstasy,—“What new joys arise within me! I am dying! I hear Odin’s voice; the gates of his palace are already opened, and half-naked maidens advance to meet me. A blue scarf heightens the dazzling whiteness of their bosoms; they approach and present me with the soul-exhilarating beverage in the bloody skulls of my enemies.” EV. In that awful moment, when the spirit is “Soon from his cell of clay To burst a seraph in the blaze of day,” the mind is prone to yield to those feelings which it might perhaps in the turmoil of the busy world and at another period deem superstition. There is something in the approach of death of so holy and so solemn a nature, something so unlike life in the feeling of the dying, that in this transition, although we cannot compass the mystery, some vision of another world may steal over the retiring spirit, imparting to it a proof of its immortality. I do not fear to yield for once my approval of this devout passage of Sir Thomas Brown:—“It is observed that men sometimes upon the hour of their departure do speak and reason above themselves, for then the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.” It is on the verge of eternity, and the laws and principles of vitality may be already repealed by the Being who conferred them.—The arguments, then, regarding the phenomena of life may fail, when life has all but ceased. With this admission, I may counsel Astrophel as to the danger of adducing heathen history or fiction in proof of this solemn question. CAST. And yet Shakspere, for one, with a poet’s license, brings before us, as you do, the dying hour, as the _cause_ of prophetic vision. John of Gaunt, on his death-bed, mutters,— “Methinks I am a prophet new inspired, And thus expiring do foretell of him,” and then predicts the fate of Richard. And remember, the dying Hotspur says,— ——“now could I prophecy, _But that_ the icy hand of death,” &c. EV. Well, I will not controvert your creed, Astrophel; rather let me illustrate some of your apparent mysteries by simple analogy.