Above all, the thought that a will is nothing if not a preparation for death gives to its study the ultimate significance. For what can be more momentous than decisions then; what more humorous, in the older and deeper sense, than foibles and follies at such an hour? What can be more arresting than the persistence which prompts a man at the approach of death to seal his life’s work, evil or beneficent, with the sanction of his will? “Even on the verge of the grave he sought to slake his ambition by unlawful means; and he succeeded,” says Dr. August Fournier of Napoleon I. Charles V., in a codicil executed a few days before his death, solemnly exhorts his son to extirpate the heresy of Luther. Señor Ferrer dictates his will in the prison chapel at Barcelona, emphasising the salient points of his belief. There is no retractation or regret. John Boyce, “he being desperately wounded in one of his legs the 25th day of July, 1666, in the engagement with the Hollanders” sets his hand and seal to his testament “first in the presence of my God above, and in the presence of us John King, Robert Goulding.” There is a fine simplicity and solemnity in that. The Noble Robert Dunant, whose will is dated at Geneva, August 12, 1768, writes simply and solemnly too. “I the underwritten Counsellor of State, having first humbled myself before God and implored the assistance of His good Spirit to conduct me wisely as well in the present as all the other acts of my life, have made and do make my will in the following manner.” But casual and worldly wills are common enough. A few words on a picture-postcard, “All for mother” on an old envelope, have been thought enough, or have proved enough for a valid will. Mrs. Lirriper’s legacy, readers of Dickens will remember, was written in pencil on the back of the ace of hearts. “To the authorities. When I am dead pray send what is left, as a last legacy, to Mrs. Lirriper, eighty-one Norfolk Street, Strand, London.” With others the preparation for death is a pious literary task. Recently a little volume found its way into the writer’s hands from the Maison du Sacré Cœur de Beauvais, a “Testament Spirituel,” which, though not executed for a court of law, must have found favour in the courts of heaven. In wills, indeed, we see the romance of souls. Catholic, Anglican, and Protestant dedications of the soul to God, whether in the fifteenth or the sixteenth century, are often very beautiful and touching. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the custom and tradition have departed. Only occasionally a Catholic or a fervent Evangelical recalls forgotten days. Some examples of eighteenth-century piety will be given later, but these essays would not be complete without other illustrations.