us a single avant-courier—­yet we all know that every day brings it nearer.  On the supposition that we were to live here always, there would be little inducement to exertion.  But, having some work at heart, the knowledge that we may be, any day, finally interrupted, is an incentive to diligence.  We naturally desire to have it completed, or at least far advanced toward completion, before that final interruption takes place.  And knowing that his existence here is limited, a man’s workings have reference to others rather than to himself, and thereby into his nature comes a new influx of nobility.  If a man plants a tree, he knows that other hands than his will gather the fruit; and when he plants it, he thinks quite as much of those other hands as of his own.  Thus to the poet there is the dearer life after life; and posterity’s single laurel leaf is valued more than a multitude of contemporary bays.  Even the man immersed in money-making does not make money so much for himself as for those who may come after him.  Riches in noble natures have a double sweetness.  The possessor enjoys his wealth, and he heightens that enjoyment by the imaginative entrance into the pleasure which his son or his nephew may derive from it when he is away, or the high uses to which he may turn it.  Seeing that we have no perpetual lease of life and its adjuncts, we do not live for ourselves.  And thus it is that death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.  My life, and your life, flowing on thus day by day, is a vapid enough piece of business; but when we think that it must close, a multitude of considerations, not connected with ourselves but with others, rush in, and vapidity vanishes at once.  Life, if it were to flow on forever and thus, would stagnate and rot.  The hopes, and fears, and regrets, which move and trouble it, keep it fresh and healthy, as the sea is kept alive by the trouble of its tides.  In a tolerably comfortable world, where death is not, it is difficult to see from what quarter these healthful fears, regrets, and hopes could come.  As it is, there are agitations and sufferings in our lots enough; but we must remember that it is on account of these sufferings and agitations that we become creatures breathing thoughtful breath.  As has already been said, death takes away the commonplace of life.  And positively, when one looks on the thousand and one poor, foolish, ignoble faces of this world, and listens to the chatter as poor and foolish as the faces, one, in order to have any proper respect for them, is forced to remember that solemnity of death, which is silently waiting.  The foolishest person will look grand enough one day.  The features are poor now, but the hottest tears and the most passionate embraces will not seem out of place then.  If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him.  What superiority he may have