Leibnitz, being every way superior to Malebranche, one might, a fortiori, have counted on his being murdered; which, however, was not the case.  I believe he was nettled at this neglect, and felt himself insulted by the security in which he passed his days.  In no other way can I explain his conduct at the latter end of his life, when he chose to grow very avaricious, and to hoard up large sums of gold, which he kept in his own house.  This was at Vienna, where he died; and letters are still in existence, describing the immeasurable anxiety which he entertained for his throat.  Still his ambition, for being attempted at least, was so great, that he would not forego the danger.  A late English pedagogue, of Birmingham manufacture, viz., Dr. Parr, took a more selfish course, under the same circumstances.  He had amassed a considerable quantity of gold and silver plate, which was for some time deposited in his bed-room at his parsonage house, Hatton.  But growing every day more afraid of being murdered, which he knew that he could not stand, (and to which, indeed, he never had the slightest pretension,) he transferred the whole to the Hatton blacksmith; conceiving, no doubt, that the murder of a blacksmith would fall more lightly on the salus reipublicae, than that of a pedagogue.  But I have heard this greatly disputed; and it seems now generally agreed, that one good horse-shoe is worth about 2 1/4 Spital sermons.

As Leibnitz, though not murdered, may be said to have died, partly of the fear that he should be murdered, and partly of vexation that he was not,—­Kant, on the other hand—­who had no ambition in that way—­had a narrower escape from a murderer than any man we read of, except Des Cartes.  So absurdly does fortune throw about her favors!  The case is told, I think, in an anonymous life of this very great man.  For health’s sake, Kant imposed upon himself, at one time, a walk of six miles every day along a highroad.  This fact becoming known to a man who had his private reasons for committing murder, at the third milestone from Koenigsberg, he waited for his “intended,” who came up to time as duly as a mail-coach.  But for an accident, Kant was a dead man.  However, on considerations of “morality,” it happened that the murderer preferred a little child, whom he saw playing in the road, to the old transcendentalist:  this child he murdered; and thus it happened that Kant escaped.  Such is the German account of the matter; but my opinion is—­that the murderer was an amateur, who felt how little would be gained to the cause of good taste by murdering an old, arid, and adust metaphysician; there was no room for display, as the man could not possibly look more like a mummy when dead, than he had done alive.