be, any day, finally interrupted, is an incentive to diligence. We
naturally desire to have it completed, or at least far advanced toward
completion, before that final interruption takes place. And knowing
that his existence here is limited, a man's workings have reference to
others rather than to himself, and thereby into his nature comes a new
influx of nobility. If a man plants a tree, he knows that other hands
than his will gather the fruit; and when he plants it, he thinks quite
as much of those other hands as of his own. Thus to the poet there is
the dearer life after life; and posterity's single laurel leaf is
valued more than a multitude of contemporary bays. Even the man
immersed in money-making does not make money so much for himself as for
those who may come after him. Riches in noble natures have a double
sweetness. The possessor enjoys his wealth, and he heightens that
enjoyment by the imaginative entrance into the pleasure which his son
or his nephew may derive from it when he is away, or the high uses to
which he may turn it. Seeing that we have no perpetual lease of life
and its adjuncts, we do not live for ourselves. And thus it is that
death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us
the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence. My
life, and your life, flowing on thus day by day, is a vapid enough
piece of business; but when we think that it must _close_, a multitude
of considerations, not connected with ourselves but with others, rush
in, and vapidity vanishes at once. Life, if it were to flow on forever
and _thus_, would stagnate and rot. The hopes, and fears, and regrets,
which move and trouble it, keep it fresh and healthy, as the sea is
kept alive by the trouble of its tides. In a tolerably comfortable
world, where death is not, it is difficult to see from what quarter
these healthful fears, regrets, and hopes could come. As it is, there
are agitations and sufferings in our lots enough; but we must remember
that it is on account of these sufferings and agitations that we become
creatures breathing thoughtful breath. As has already been said, death
takes away the commonplace of life. And positively, when one looks on
the thousand and one poor, foolish, ignoble faces of this world, and
listens to the chatter as poor and foolish as the faces, one, in order
to have any proper respect for them, is forced to remember that
solemnity of death, which