PUBLISHED BY A. AND W. GALIGNANI, AT THE ENGLISH, FRENCH, ITALIAN, GERMAN, AND SPANISH 1825. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. I 23 50 ESSAY XII. ON THE FEAR OF DEATH. "And our little life is rounded with a sleep." PERHAPS the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern-why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? I have no wish to have been alive a hundred years ago, or in the reign of Queen Anne: why should I regret and lay it so much to heart that I shall not be alive a hundred years hence, in the reign of I cannot tell whom? When Bickerstaff wrote his Essays, I knew nothing of the subjects of them: nay, much later, and but the other day, as it were, in the beginning of the reign of George III, VOL. II. |
