in thought, "I feel that I am dying. This is a strange distemper of
mine. Yesterday I seemed in perfect health, and to-morrow I shall be an
insensible corpse. How curious is the line that separates life and death
to mortal men! To be at one moment active, gay, penetrating, with stores
of knowledge at one's command, capable of delighting, instructing, and
animating mankind, and the next, lifeless and loathsome, an incumbrance
upon the face of the earth! Such is the history of many men, and such
will be mine.

"I feel as if I had yet much to do in the world; but it will not be. I
must be contented with what is past. It is in vain that I muster all my
spirits to my heart. The enemy is too mighty and too merciless for me;
he will not give me time so much as to breathe. These things are not yet
at least in our power: they are parts of a great series that is
perpetually flowing. The general welfare, the great business of the
universe, will go on, though I bear no further share in promoting it.
That task is reserved for younger strengths, for you, Falkland, and such
as you. We should be contemptible indeed if the prospect of human
improvement did not yield us a pure and perfect delight, independently
of the question of our existing to partake of it. Mankind would have
little to envy to future ages, if they had all enjoyed a serenity as
perfect as mine has been for the latter half of my existence."

Mr. Clare sat up through the whole day, indulging himself in easy and
cheerful exertions, which were perhaps better calculated to refresh and
invigorate the frame, than if he had sought repose in its direct form.
Now and then he was visited with a sudden pang; but it was no sooner
felt, than he seemed to rise above it, and smiled at the impotence of
these attacks. They might destroy him, but they could not disturb. Three
or four times he was bedewed with profuse sweats; and these again were