distance from his residence to enable him to use the latter 'for purposes of scientific observation.' But this quaint legacy was revoked by a codicil, though the testatrix was careful to declare that the change was due to personal considerations, and not to any altered opinion respecting the importance of physiological inquiries. Had the bequest stood as originally intended, perhaps the Revenue officials would have claimed duty upon that wonderful cerebral pulp from which such a lengthy series of works emanated, and, if so, how would they have appraised its value for legacy purposes?

Jeremy Bentham's attempt at post-mortem distinction was by no means as successful as he could have desired. He wished to bequeath his whole body to posterity. He had the amazing assurance to assume that it might be usefully introduced at philosophical banquets after the fashion of the celebrated Egyptian skeleton. With merciless effrontery he would have deprived the guests of their appetites, and saddened their mirth by the ghastly presence of a corpse at the head of the table. Accordingly, he directed that his body should be scientifically preserved. But even his disciples and admirers did not appreciate his dead companionship as he expected, and probably most of them soon wished that he had been deposited in the usual fashion in the tomb. At length poor Bentham found his way to University College, London, where his chief office appears to have been to serve as a grim laughing-stock for the students. The vanity of a man who could believe that his pickled presence could be acceptable to future generations, even in their gleesome gatherings, must have been unbounded.

CHAPTER XX.

THE GREAT POST-MORTEM.

BUT once dead, buried, and epitaphed, what of the Great Hereafter? For the departed one the true life has only just commenced when he crosses the mysterious threshold of Time. Who durst venture to write a chapter on the author in Eternity? Surely if we might expect any class of mortals to be interested in upholding the doctrine of immortality, it is the men who by their gifts are constituted the instructors, and by their office the torch-bearers, of the human race. These, least of all, last of all, should be willing to believe that at death the body becomes a hopeless clod, and the soul a nameless nonentity. These least of all, last of all, should give the lie to that longing for Fame which has been one of the great prompting principles of their lives, and which has sustained them in their toils, even when flesh failed and spirit faltered. Possessing minds specially illuminated, and tongues touched with live coals from the great Altar of Creation, it is their duty to head the multitude in its mystic march, and light us on to a better land. But what shall we say if we find men with Heaven's patent of nobility in their hands, voluntarily enrolling themselves under the black flag of Annihilation, joining the dismal procession of sceptics and guiding their fellows to the region of Oblivion, or, worse

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still, to the place where darkness dwells for ever? Can greater contradiction well be imagined than the thousand aspirations of genius on the one hand, all soaring beyond the little limits of the Present; and on the other, the paralysing belief that beyond the grave there is naught but a hideous blank! I will have nothing to do with your immortality,' wrote Byron in 1811; 'if men are to live, why die at all?' 'I don't know whether you have got a soul or not,' said Fuseli sturdily, 'but I know I have.'

It becomes us, however, to speak sparingly on this momentous matter. It is with a man's writings we are now concerned. What view will he take of them when he turns over their pages in the future? What shall be said for him when the great post-mortem is held?

Rousseau's account of his intended appearance at the great Day of Assize is a miracle of vanity and audacity. When the trumpet of judgment shall sound he will present himself before the Universal Sovereign with his Confessions in his hand. He will address the Great Being in a confident voice, and say, 'See here what I have done, what I have thought, what I have been! I have uttered what was good and what was evil with equal freedom. I have shown myself such as I was, contemptible and vile, when I have been such good, generous, and sublime, when that was the case. I have unveiled my inner man such as it has appeared to thee, O Eternal Being. Assemble around me the miserable crowd of my fellow-creatures; let them hear my confessions, groan over my indignities, and blush for my miseries. Let each of them in turn lay bare his heart at the foot of thy throne with the same sincerity, and then let a single soul of them tell thee if he dare, " I was better than that man." This passage may well stand unrivalled in human literature. It is perhaps the most colossal display of conceit and presumption ever put

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in print. It seems incredible that any mortal could imagine that in the eyes of the Creator Right and Wrong were comparative questions, and that the great assize was a simple inquiry whether one man's soul was better or worse than another! even the stupidest culprit brought into court would have the effrontery to excuse himself by pleading that other sinners had stolen more purses than he had done; still less would he claim acquittal and approval because he frankly confessed the evil that had been in him.

Frightfully ridiculous is the idea of this same Jean Jacques marching into the Hall of Doom with a copy of his book in his hand, and confidently putting it in evidence as a complete answer to the delinquencies which the Recording Angel had registered, and which now stood to his charge in an indictment of innumerable counts. None but a Frenchman, in fact, could well have penned such a paragraph, and he only in anticipation of a Frenchman's Day of Judgment.

But whatever may be the destiny or the duration of the Soul, its published records cannot be carried away from earth: they must remain here, either for good or for ill. In the Egyptian mythology the spirits of the departed were conducted to the Hall of Osiris, and tried before that Deity, with his fortytwo avengers ranged in double row; their good deeds being weighed in a balance which could not lie, and the result registered with an unerring pen by the clerk of the dread assize. There are scales of far finer fabrication in which every writer's works are tested at his decease, and either condemned inexorably or finally stamped with a divine imprimatur and an everlasting cum privilegio. Who can doubt how the beam, resting on its diamond bearings, and turning with the weight of a comma, would move when such productions as Butler's

Analogy or Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were tried, or, on the other hand, how angrily it would bound upwards when Voltaire's La Pucelle or Byron's Don Juan was submitted to the proof? In that court of criticism a reputation laboriously acquired on earth may vanish in an instant.

When Burns's remains were transferred from the northerly part of St. Michael's churchyard at Dumfries to the Mausoleum at the south-east side, the coffin was unavoidably laid open, and there the great poet was found lying as if he had just sunk into a dreamless sleep, the body appearing entire, the head covered with hair, the teeth white and firm in their sockets, the brow arched and unshrunken. He might have been interred twenty hours only instead of twenty years. But the vision lasted only for a few moments, for on attempting to move the coffin, the head parted from the trunk, and the whole body, with the exception of the bones, crumbled into dust.'

Just so is it in a metaphorical sense with many a proud reputation when it is laid bare to the searching light of the true sun, and brought into the all-dissolving atmosphere of eternity. There may be nothing left but a handful of dust. Even whilst living it has often become a serious question for an author, notwithstanding all the admiration which the world may have lavished upon him, whether he has employed his rare gifts for good purposes or for evil; whether his genius has expended itself in bright but profitless flashes; whether his pen has been used in adorning vice and gilding corruption; or, on the other hand, whether he has spent his strength in developing noble thoughts which have kindled other minds, and thereby helped to raise the moral temperature and refine the moral atmosphere of the globe.

Many a renowned writer has expressed deep regret when