one) groan, and all is over. But, in the sense of the Litany, the
mutineer's death is far from sudden: his offence originally, his
imprisonment, his trial, the interval between his sentence and its
execution, having all furnished him with separate warnings of his fate
--having all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation.

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we comprehend the
faithful earnestness with which a holy Christian Church pleads on
behalf of her poor departing children that God would vouchsafe to them
the last great privilege and distinction possible on a death-bed, viz.,
the opportunity of untroubled preparation for facing this mighty trial.
Sudden death, as a mere variety in the modes of dying where death in
some shape is inevitable, proposes a question of choice which, equally
in the Roman and the Christian sense, will be variously answered
according to each man's variety of temperament. Meantime, one aspect of
sudden death there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can arise,
that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating--viz., where it
surprises a man under circumstances which offer (or which seem to
offer) some hurrying, flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading
it. Sudden as the danger which it affronts must be any effort by which
such an evasion can be accomplished. Even _that_, even the sickening
necessity for hurrying in extremity where all hurry seems destined to
be vain,--even that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one
particular case: viz., where the appeal is made not exclusively to the
instinct of self-preservation, but to the conscience, on behalf of some
other life besides your own, accidentally thrown upon _your_
protection. To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might
seem comparatively venial; though, in fact, it is far from venial. But
to fail in a case where Providence has suddenly thrown into your hands
the final interests of another,--a fellow creature shuddering between