from a spirit of cupidity after the crown of
martyrdom.--Soldiers, in all times and circumstances, pledge themselves
to the possible duty of suicide by the very act of becoming soldiers.
They engage to make the first charge, and to mount a breach if called
upon. And there have been found soldiers for every perilous service that
has been required, throughout all wars. There have been volunteers to
mount the breach, solitary men or small bands to hold narrow bridges and
passes, from the first incursion of tribe upon tribe in barbarous
conflict, up to the suicide of Van Speyk, whose monument is still fresh
from the chisel in the Nieuw Kerk of Amsterdam. Van Speyk commanded a
gun-boat which was stranded in a heavy gale, and boarded by the
Belgians,--the foe. Van Speyk had sworn never to surrender his boat, and
his suicide was a point of military honour. He seems to have considered
the matter thus; for he prayed for pardon of his crime of
self-destruction after laying his lighted cigar on the open barrel of
powder which blew up the boat. The remaining suicides (except, of
course, the insane,) are justified by none. Persons who shrink from
suffering so far as to withdraw from their duties, and to forsake those
to whom their exertions are due, are objects of contemptuous compassion
in the present day, when, moral having succeeded to physical force in
men's esteem, it is seen to be nobler to endure evils than to hide one's
spirit from them.

Every society has its suicides, and much may be learned from their
character and number, both as to the notions on morals which prevail,
and the religious sentiment which animates to or controls the act. It is
with the last that we now have to do.--The act of laying down life is
one thing among a people who have dim and mournful anticipations of a
future life, like the ancient Greeks; and quite another among those who,
like the first Christians, have a clear vision of bliss and triumph in
the world on which they rush. Suicide is one thing to a man who is
certain of entering immediately upon purgatory; and to another whose
first step is to be upon the necks of his enemies; and to a third who
believes that he is to lie conscious in his grave for some thousands of
years; and to a fourth who has no idea that he shall survive or revive
at all. When Curtius leaped into the gulf, he probably leaped into utter
darkness, other than physical; but when Guyon of Marseilles sunned
himself for the last t