, has
curiously described the death of Innocent the Tenth, who was a character
unblemished by vices, and who died at an advanced age, with too robust a
constitution. _Dopo lunga e terribile agonia, con dolore e con pena,
seperandosi l'anima da quel corpo robusto, egli spiro ai sette di
Genuaro, nel ottantesimo primo de suoi anno._ "After a long and terrible
agony, with great bodily pain and difficulty, his soul separated itself
from that robust frame, and expired in his eighty-first year."

Some have composed sermons on death, while they passed many years of
anxiety, approaching to madness, in contemplating their own. The
certainty of an immediate separation from all our human sympathies may,
even on a death-bed suddenly disorder the imagination. The great
physician of our times told me of a general, who had often faced the
cannon's mouth, dropping down in terror, when informed by him that his
disease was rapid and fatal. Some have died of the strong imagination of
death. There is a print of a knight brought on the scaffold to suffer;
he viewed the headsman; he was blinded, and knelt down to receive the
stroke. Having passed through the whole ceremony of a criminal
execution, accompanied by all its disgrace, it was ordered that his life
should be spared. Instead of the stroke from the sword, they poured cold
water over his neck. After this operation the knight remained
motionless; they discovered that he had expired in the very imagination
of death! Such are among the many causes which may affect the mind in
the hour of its last trial. The habitual associations of the natural
character are most likely to prevail, though not always. The intrepid
Marshal Biron disgraced his exit by womanish tears and raging
imbecility; the virtuous Erasmus, with miserable groans, was heard
crying out, _Domine! Domine! fac finem! fac finem!_ Bayle having
prepared his proof for the printer, pointed to where it lay, when dying.
The last words which Lord Chesterfield was heard to speak were, when the
valet, opening the curtains of the bed, announced Mr. Dayroles, "Give
Dayroles a chair!" "This good breeding," observed the late Dr. Warren,
his physician, "only quits him with his life." The last words of Nelson
were, "Tell Collingwood to bring the fleet to an anchor." The tranquil
grandeur which cast a new majesty over Charles the First on the
scaffold, appeared when he declared, "I fear not death! Death is not
terrible to me!" And the characte