Another, though contrary curiosity (of which singularity, also, I do not want domestic example), seems to be somewhat akin to this, that a man shall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life to contrive his obsequies to so particular and unusual a parsimony as of one servant with a lantern, I see this humour commended, and the appointment of Marcus.  Emilius Lepidus, who forbade his heirs to bestow upon his hearse even the common ceremonies in use upon such occasions.  Is it yet temperance and frugality to avoid expense and pleasure of which the use and knowledge are imperceptible to us?  See, here, an easy and cheap reformation.  If instruction were at all necessary in this case, I should be of opinion that in this, as in all other actions of life, each person should regulate the matter according to his fortune; and the philosopher Lycon prudently ordered his friends to dispose of his body where they should think most fit, and as to his funeral, to order it neither too superfluous nor too mean.  For my part, I should wholly refer the ordering of this ceremony to custom, and shall, when the time comes, accordingly leave it to their discretion to whose lot it shall fall to do me that last office.  “Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis, non negligendus in nostris;”—­["The place of our sepulture is to be contemned by us, but not to be neglected by our friends.”—­Cicero, Tusc. i. 45.]—­ and it was a holy saying of a saint, “Curatio funeris, conditio sepultura:  pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidia mortuorum.”—­["The care of death, the place of sepulture, the pomps of obsequies, are rather consolations to the living than succours to the dead.”  August.  De Civit.  Dei, i. 12.]—­Which made Socrates answer Crito, who, at death, asked him how he would be buried:  “How you will,” said he.  “If I were to concern myself beyond the present about this affair, I should be most tempted, as the greatest satisfaction of this kind, to imitate those who in their lifetime entertain themselves with the ceremony and honours of their own obsequies beforehand, and are pleased with beholding their own dead countenance in marble.  Happy are they who can gratify their senses by insensibility, and live by their death!”

I am ready to conceive an implacable hatred against all popular domination, though I think it the most natural and equitable of all, so oft as I call to mind the inhuman injustice of the people of Athens, who, without remission, or once vouchsafing to hear what they had to say for themselves, put to death their brave captains newly returned triumphant from a naval victory they had obtained over the Lacedaemonians near the Arginusian Isles, the most bloody and obstinate engagement that ever the Greeks fought at sea; because (after the victory) they followed up the blow and pursued the advantages presented to them by the rule of war, rather than stay to gather up and bury their dead.  And the execution is yet rendered more