What does the murderer think when his eyes are forever blinded by the accursed nightcap?  In what form did thought condense itself between the gleam of the lifted axe and the rolling of King Charles’s head in the saw-dust?  This kind of speculation may be morbid, but it is not necessarily so.  All extremes of human experience touch us; and we have all the deepest personal interest in the experience of death.  Out of all we know about dying we strive to clutch something which may break its solitariness, and relieve us by a touch of companionship.

To denude death of its terrible associations were a vain attempt.  The atmosphere is always cold around an iceberg.  In the contemplation of dying the spirit may not flinch, but pulse and heart, colour and articulation, are always cowards.  No philosophy will teach them bravery in the stern presence.  And yet there are considerations which rob death of its ghastliness, and help to reconcile us to it.  The thoughtful happiness of a human being is complex, and in certain moved moments, which, after they have gone, we can recognise to have been our happiest, some subtle thought of death has been curiously intermixed.  And this subtle intermixture it is which gives the happy moment its character—­which makes the difference between the gladness of a child, resident in mere animal health and impulse, and too volatile to be remembered, and the serious joy of a man, which looks before and after, and takes in both this world and the next.  Speaking broadly, it may be said that it is from some obscure recognition of the fact of death that life draws its final sweetness.  An obscure, haunting recognition, of course; for if more than that, if the thought becomes palpable, defined, and present, it swallows up everything.  The howling of the winter wind outside increases the warm satisfaction of a man in bed; but this satisfaction is succeeded by quite another feeling when the wind grows into a tempest, and threatens to blow the house down.  And this remote recognition of death may exist almost constantly in a man’s mind, and give to his life keener zest and relish.  His lights may burn the brighter for it, and his wines taste sweeter.  For it is on the tapestry or a dim ground that the figures come out in the boldest relief and the brightest colour.

If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business.  It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death.  The brutes die even as we; but it is our knowledge that we have to die that makes us human.  If nature cunningly hides death, and so permits us to play out our little games, it is easily seen that our knowing it to be inevitable, that to every one of us it will come one day or another, is a wonderful spur to action.  We really do work while it is called to-day, because the night cometh when no man can work.  We may not expect it soon—­it may not have sent