criterion for the world at large. Yet, whatever may be its other physiological bearings, it is no exception to the rule that life and breath are, for the purposes of sepulture, convertible terms. Without attaching importance to a principal peculiarity of the case, that it required an effort of the will to bring Colonel Townshend into the state, and that by an effort of the will he could bring himself out of it, he was unable, after all, to prolong the period of suspension, or apparently suspended, animation beyond a single half hour; and in order to his being buried alive he must have been a party to the act, and prepared his funeral in advance. The assumption, indeed, pervades M. Fontenelle's book, that everybody wrongly supposed to be dead had a narrow escape of premature interment, though it has never been long, in any instance that is known to be authentic, before some outward sign attracted attention, unless death had merely slackened his pace instead of turning aside his footsteps. Funerals, it is true, on the Continent take place sooner than with us. In Spain, if M. Fontenelle's word is a warrant for the fact, whoever oversleeps himself will have to finish out his slumbers in the grave,-which, beyond doubt, is the most powerful incentive to early rising that was ever devised. But in France, the grand theatre for these harrowing tragedies, it is usual to bury on the third day; and if at that interval it was common for seeming corpses to revive, we, in this country, should be habituated to behold persons whose death had been announced, whose knell had tolled, and whose coffins had been made, rise up and doff their grave clothes, to appear once more among astonished friends. Yet so far is this from being a frequent occurrence, that whoever heard in modern England of a person who had been numbered three days among the dead resuming his vacant place among the living? At sea there may be better ground for apprehension. Nothing more excites the superstitious fears of a sailor than a cat thrown overboard, or a corpse that is not; and very shortly after death occurs it is usual to transfer the body from the ship to the deep. On one occasion a man, with concussion of the brain, who had lost the power of speech and motion, overheard what must have been to him the most interesting conversation that ever fell upon his ears, a discussion between his brother and the captain of the vessel, as to whether he should immediately be consigned to the waves, or be carried to Rotterdam, to be buried on shore. Luckily their predilec tions were for a land funeral; and, though a colloquy so alarming might have been expected to complete the injury to the poor man's brain, he recovered from the double shock of fright and disease. Dr. Alfred Taylor, who has treated the signs of death with the sound sense and science that distinguish all his writings upon legal medicine, relates the anecdote as if he was satisfied of its truth, and the fate which one has narrowly missed, it is not impossible may have overtaken others. But even at sea, nothing short of the grossest negligence could occasion the calamity; and for negligence, we repeat, there is no effectual cure. The ceasing to breathe is not the only criterion of death antecedent to corruption. There is a second token specified by Shakspeare, and familiar to every village nurse, which is quite conclusive, the gradual transition from suppleness to rigidity. The first effect of death is relaxation of the muscles. The lower jaw usually drops, the limbs hang heavily, the joints are flexible, and the flesh soft. The opposite state of contraction ensues; then the joints are stiff and the flesh firm, and the body, lately yielding and pliant, becomes hard and unbending. The contraction commences in the muscles of the neck and trunk, appears next in the upper extremities, then in the lower, and finally recedes in the same order in which it came on. It begins on an average five or six hours after death, and ordinarily continues from sixteen to twenty-four. But the period both of its appearance and duration are considerably varied by the constitution of the person, the nature of the death, and the state of the atmosphere. With the aged and feeble, with those who die of chronic diseases, and are wasted away by lingering sickness, it comes on quickly-sometimes in half an hour-and remains for a period which is short in proportion to the rapidity of its appearance. With the strong and the muscular, with the greater part of the persons who perish by a sudden or violent death in the fullness of their powers, it is slow in advancing, and slow in going off. In cases like these, it is often a day or two before it commences, and it has been known to last a week. When decay begins its reign, this interregnum of contraction is at an end, and therefore a warm and humid atmosphere, which hastens corruption, curtails the period of rigidity, while it is protracted in the cold and dry weather that keeps putrefaction at bay. Though a symptom of some disorders, there is this clear line between mortal rigid ity and the spasm of disease—that in the latter the attack is never preceded by the appearance of death. In the one case the result comes after a train of inanimate phenomena; in the other, amidst functions peculiar to life. The alarmists, who deal in extravagant fables, will persist in retaining unreasonable fears; but upon no question are medical authorities more thoroughly agreed than that the moment the contraction of the muscles is apparent, there can be no revival unless the breath of life could be breathed afresh into the untenanted clay. There is one effect of the muscular contraction of death which often occasions erroneous and painful ideas. In the stage of relaxation, when the muscles fall, and there is neither physical action nor mental emotion to disturb the calm, the countenance assumes the "mild, angelic air" described by Byron in The Giaour, and which he says in a note lasts for "a few, and but a few hours" after the spirit has taken flight. It is the accession of muscular contraction which dissipates the charm, which knits the brow, draws down the mouth, pinches the features, and changes a soft and soothing expression to a harsh, uneasy, suffering look. Where the contraction is slight the face is less disturbed; and Dr. Symonds has known it drawn into a seeming smile. Those who may only chance to see the corpse of a relative while it bears the care-worn aspect which is far the most frequent, are distressed at what they suppose to be an indication that the latest impressions of the world were troubled -that death took place amid pain of body and sorrow of mind. It appears from the Journal of Sir Walter Scott, who evidently visited the mortal remains of his wife during the crisis of contraction, what a pang the sight communicated to a heart which, if quick to feel, could never be outdone in the resolution to endure. Violent passions, extreme agony, and protracted suffering may give a set to the muscles which the rigid state will bring out anew into strong relief. But the expression of the face is chiefly determined by the condition of the body, or, in other words, by the degree of contraction. Persons who have died of exhausting diseases will often, notwithstanding they expire in despair, wear a look of benign repose; while a more muscular subject who fell asleep in peaceful hope, may be distinguished by a mournful, lowering visage. Even when the expression is influenced by the bent which was given to the muscles by previous feelings, it is mostly the memorial of a | storm which had spent its fury before life was extinct; for usually in natural death there is a lull at the last, and the setting is peaceful, however tempestuous the decline. In strict reason it can matter nothing, when the weary are once at rest, whether the concluding steps of the journey were toilsome or pleasant; but it is so much our instinct to attach importance to last impressions, and wounded hearts are so sensitive, that to many it will be a relief to know their inferences are mistaken and their grief misplaced. When the heat-developing faculty is extinct the body obeys the laws of inanimate objects, and coincident for the most part with the stage of rigidity is that chill and clammy condition of the skin which is so familiarly associated with death. To judge by the feelings, the atmosphere is genial compared to the corpse. But the skin of the dead is a powerful conductor, and the rapidity with which it appropriates the warmth of the living leaves a chill behind which is a deceitful measure of its actual frost. The length of time which a body takes to cool will depend upon the state of the body itself, and the circumstances in which it may chance to be placed. The process will be slower when it is well wrapped up than when lightly covered; in summer than in winter; in a still atmosphere than in currents of air; with the stout than with the thin; with persons in their prime than with the aged or the young. Usually in proportion as the disease is acute, and the death rapid, the less heat has been expended before the fire is extinguished, and the corpse will be the longer in parting with its warmth. If the disease is slow, the lamp burns dimly before it quite goes out, and the temperature, declining during life, will afterward arrive the sooner at its lowest point. This will also happen in particular disorders which, though sudden and violent, are hostile to the development of animal warmth. In certain forms of hysteria, in swoons, and in cholera morbus, the body, to the touch, might sometimes seem a corpse. skin is not of itself an evidence of death, but it is sooner or later an unfailing accompani ment. An icy To rigidity succeeds corruption, which. both from its own nature and the surrounding circumstances, cannot possibly be confounded with vital gangrene. It commences in the belly, the skin of which turns to a bluish green, that gradually deepens to brown or black, and progressively covers the remainder of the body. But when the hue of putrefaction has spread over the belly there is 1 a risk to health, without an addition to security, in waiting for the further encroachments of decay. In England a body is seldom committed to the ground before there is set upon it this certain mark that it is hurrying to the dust from whence it sprung. Nor is the haste which is used at some seasons, and in some diseases, a real deviation from the rule. The rapid onset of corruption creates the necessity, and that which renders the burial speedy ensures its being safe. Of the innumerable paths which terminate in the common goal some are easier to tread than others, and it might be expected from the diversities of temperament that there would be a difference of opinion about which was best. Cæsar desired the death which was most sudden and unexpected. His words were spoken at supper, and the following morning the Senate-house witnessed the fulfillment of the wish. Pliny also considered an instantaneous death the highest felicity of life; and Augustus held a somewhat similar opinion. When he heard that any person had died quickly and easily, he invoked the like good fortune for himself and his friends. Montaigne was altogether of Cæsar's party, and, to use his own metaphor, thought that the pill was swallowed best without chewing. If Sir Thomas Browne had been of Cæsar's religion, he would have shared his desires, and preferred going off at a single blow to being grated to pieces with a torturing disease. He conceived that the Eastern favorite who was killed in his sleep, would hardly have bled at the presence of his destroyer. Sir Thomas Browne was one of those men who habitually apply thefr hearts unto wisdom, and his latter end, come when it might, would have found him prepared. But Christianity, in enlarging our hopes, has added to our fears. He felt that the mode of dying was comparatively an insignificant consideration, and however much he inclined by nature to Cæsar's choice, and studied to be ready for the hastiest summons, a sense of infirmity taught him the wisdom of that petition in the Litany by which we ask to be delivered from sudden death. With the majority flesh and blood speak the same language; they had rather that the candle should burn to the socket than the flame be blown out. The prospect, nevertheless, of protracted suffering will sometimes drive desperate beings to seek a shorter and easier passage from the world. Many of the Romans during the plague of Syracuse attacked the posts of the enemy, that they might fall by the sword instead of the pestilence. Every day for a considerable period of the French Revolution, numbers drowned themselves in the Seine, to anticipate the tedious anguish of famine. Death, which in one form is fled from as an enemy, in a different shape is welcomed as a friend. A condemned soldier, in Montaigne's time, remarked some preparations from his prison which led him to think he was to perish by torture; he resolved to discharge for himself the executioner's office, though he had no other weapon than a rusty nail, which, having first ineffectually mangled his throat, he thrust into his belly to the very head. The authorities hastened to his cell to read out the sentence, that the law might yet be beforehand with death. The soldier, sufficiently sensible to hear what was passing, found that his punishment was simple beheading. He immediately rallied, expressed his delight, accepted wine to recruit his strength, and by the change in the kind of death seemed, says Montaigne, as though he was delivered from death itself. If his suspicions had proved correct, it is difficult to suppose that his tormentors could have improved on his own performances with the rusty nail. Gustavus Adolphus, who realized his aspirations on the field of Lutzen, was in the habit of saying that no man was happier than he who died in the exercise of his calling. So Nelson wished the roar of cannon to sound his parting knell. "You know that I always desired to die this way," said Moore to Hardinge at Corunna-and the anguish of the wound had no power to disturb his satisfaction. Marshal Villars was told in his latest moments that the Duke of Berwick had just met at the seige of Philipsburg with a soldier's death, and he answered, “I have always said that he was more fortunate than myself." His confessor urged with justice that the better fortune was to have leisure to prepare for eternity;-but possibly the exclamation proceeded from a momentary gleam of martial ardor, which instinct kindled, and reflection quenched. A Christian would never, indeed, fail to make the preparation for battle a preparation for death. Unless "every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience," he must know that he is staking both soul and body on the hazard of the fight. Soldiers," says an old divine, "that carry their lives in their hands, should carry the grace of God in their hearts." Death at the cannon's mouth may be sudden, and answer the first of Cæsar's conditions; with none but the presumptuous 66 can it answer the second, and come unexpected. We once heard a recruit assign as his reason for enlisting, that he should now at least see something of life. And," added his companion, "something of death." The poor fellow, perhaps, like many others, had forgotten that any such contingency was included in the bond. The Duke d'Enghien appeared to feel like a man reprieved, when, on issuing from his prison, he found he was to perish by a military execution. Suicides are prone to use the implements of their trade. It was the usage in Ireland in rude times, when rebels perhaps were more plentiful than rope, to hang them with willows. In the reign of Elizabeth a criminal of this description petitioned the deputy against the breach of the observance, and begged the favor to suffer by the time-honored "wyth," instead of the new-fangled halter. When Elizabeth herself expected Mary to put her to death, she had resolved on the request to be beheaded with a sword, and not with an axe,-which seems a distinction without a difference. In the same category we may place Lord Ferrers's prayer for a silken rope at Tyburn. But the fancy of the Duke of Clarence, could it be considered established, is the most singular on record. He must have been strangely infatuated by the "Pleasures of Memory," when he imagined his favorite Malmsey could give a relish to drowning. Suffocation was not more luxurious to the parasites of Elagabalus that they were stifled with perfumes. | held to be pious and privileged; father performed it for son, son for father. They considered they were curtailing the dreaded death struggle that a headlong fall from the precipice was as much easier as it was quicker than the winding descent by the path. In France it was the established practice to put to death persons attacked by hydrophobia the moment the disease was plainly incurable. There is a vulgar notion that those who are wounded by a rabid dog become inoculated with the animal's propensity to bite. But the motive of self-defence of ridding the world of a fellow-creature who had entered into the class of noxious beings, which might be suspected to have had an influence in hard-hearted times-was not the source of these unnatural homicides. They were designed in pure pity to the wretched sufferers, though the tender mercies which are wicked are always cruel. Lestoile in his Journal, which belongs to the early part of the seventeenth century, relates the events of the kind which came to his knowledge under the date of their occurrence. A young woman attacked with hydrophobia had in such horror the smothering, which, the Diarist quietly observes in a parenthesis, "is usual in these maladies," that she was rendered more frantic by the prospect of the remedy than by the present disease. Habit with her relations was stronger than nature; they had no idea of remitting the customary violence, even at the entreaties of the interested person, and only so far yielded to her dread of suffocation as to mingle poison with her medicine instead, which Lestoile says was administered by her husband" with all the regrets in the world." Sometimes, however, the victims invited their doom. A page, on his way to the sea, then esteemed a specific in hydrophobia, was scratched by a thorn which drew blood, as he passed through a wood. For a person in his condition to see his own blood was supposed to be fatal. The lad, apprehending the accession of a fit, begged the attendants to smother him on the spot, "and this," says Lestoile, "they did weeping-an event piteous to hear, and still more to behold." The act of dying is technically termed A second page is mentioned by the same "the agony." The expression embodies a Diarist, who happily died as they were precommon and mistaken belief, which has gived paring to shoot him. It is evident how birth to many cruel and even criminal pracn much these domestic immolations must have tices. The Venetian ambassador in Englan- weakened the awful reverence for life; the in the reign of Queen Mary mentions among weeping executioner of his dearest relatives the regular usages of the lower orders, that was separated by a far less impassable gulf a pillow was placed upon the mouth of the dy- from the cold-blooded murderer. A medical ing, on which their nearest relations sat or lean-trickery, which grew no doubt from the ed till they were stifled. The office was frightful reality, still remains in France Old Fuller, having pondered all the modes of destruction, arrived at the short and decisive conclusion-" None please me." "But away," the good man adds, with these thoughts; the mark must not choose what arrow shall be shot against it." The choice is not ours to make, and if it were, the privilege would prove an embarrassment. But there is consolation in the teaching of physiology. Of the innumerable weapons with which Death is armed, the worst is less intolerable than imagination presents it-his visage is more terrible than his dart. among the resources of medicine. Hydro- | phobia is sometimes feigned, and when the physician suspects imposture he orders the patient to be smothered between a couple of mattresses, which cures him, says Orfila, as if by enchantment. A mode of suffocation less murderous in appearance than the smothering with the pillow was prevalent for centuries, both on the Continent and in England. The supports were withdrawn by a jerk from beneath the head, which being suddenly thrown back, the respiration that before was labored and difficult became shortly impossible. Hence it is that Shakspeare's Timon, enumerating the accursed effects of gold, says that it will "Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads." Another practice which tortured the dying under pretence of relief, even in this country, lingered among the ignorant till recent days. The expiring ascetic of the Romish faith, prolonging his penance into death, yielded up his breath on a couch of hair. Customs survive when their reasons are forgotten. A physical virtue had come to be ascribed to the hair, and Protestants, slowly sinking to their rest, were dragged from their feather-beds, and laid on a mattress to quicken their departure. The result of most of these perverted proceedings was to combine the disadvantages of both kinds of death-to add the horror of violence to the protracted pain of gradual decay. When the wearied swimmer touched the shore, a furious billow dashed him on the rock. The pain of dying must be distinguished from the pain of the previous disease, for when life ebbs sensibility declines. As death is the final extinction of corporal feeling, so numbness increases as death comes on. The prostration of disease, like healthful fatigue, engenders a growing stupor--a sensation of subsiding softly into a coveted repose. The transition resembles what may be seen in those lofty mountains, whose sides exhibiting every climate in regular gradation, vegetation luxuriates at their base, and dwindles in the approach to the regions of snow till its feeblest manifestation is repressed by the cold. The so-called agony can never be more formidable than when the brain is the last to go, and the mind preserves to the end a rational cognizance of the state of the body. Yet persons thus situated commonly attest that there are few things in life less painful than the close. "If I had strength enough to hold a pen," said William Hunter, "I would write how easy and delightful it is to die." If this be dying," said the niece of Newton of Olney, "it is a pleasant thing to die;" "the very expression," adds her uncle, " which another friend of mine made use of on her death-bed a few years ago.' The same words have so often been uttered under similar circumstances, that we could fill pages with instances which are only varied by the name of the speaker. "If this be dying," said Lady Glenorchy, "it is the easiest thing imaginable." "I thought that dying had been more difficult," said Louis XIV. “I did not suppose it was so sweet to die," said Francis Suarez, the Spanish theologian. An agreeable surprise was the prevailing sentiment with them all; they expected the stream to terminate in the dash of the torrent, and they found it was losing itself in the gentlest current. The whole of the faculties seem sometimes concentrated on the placid enjoyment. The day Arthur Murphy died he kept repeating from Pope, "Taught half by reason, half by mere decay, To welcome death, and calmly pass away." Nor does the calm partake of the sensitiveness of sickness. There was a swell in the sea the day Collingwood breathed his last upon the element which had been the scene of his glory. Captain Thomas expressed a fear that he was disturbed by the tossing of the ship: "No, Thomas," he replied; "I am now in a state in which nothing in this world can disturb me more. I am dying: and I am sure it must be consolatory to you, and all who love me, to see how comfortably I am coming to my end." A second and common condition of the dying is to be lost to themselves and all around them in utter unconsciousness. Countenance and gestures might in many cases suggest that, however dead to the external world, interior sensibility still remained. But we have the evidence of those whom disease has left at the eleventh hour, that while their supposed sufferings were pitied by their friends, existence was a blank. Montaigne, when stunned by a fall from his horse, tore open his doublet; but he was entirely senseless, and only knew afterward that he had done it from the information of the attendants. The delirium of fever is distressing to witness, but the victim awakes from it as from a heavy sleep, totally ignorant that he has passed days and nights tossing wearily and talking wildly. Perceptions which had occupied the entire man could hardly be obliterated in the instant of recovery; or, if any one were in |