Petrarch was found sitting in his chair dead, with his book before him. Every man has within his own recollection some deaths like these, from the circle of his acquaintance. In early life, they are heard with a peculiar dread; and to some minds the thought of such an end is always alarming. So often, too, is it attended with distress to affectionate survivors, surpassing that of the usual shock, and so large a portion of mankind are unprepared for immediate departure, that the Church may well include in its prayers, a petition for deliverance from sudden death. But, apart from this distress of survivors, he who strives to watch from day to day, and from hour to hour, may come to an entire acquiescence in that manner of death appointed him, secure that even the most instantaneous stroke has its peculiar and evident alleviations. XXV Death from Inflammatory Diseases. "You pitying saw To infant weakness sunk the warrior's arm; THOMSON. THE fatal diseases which may be termed accidental in their occurrence are numerous and various, yet bear a resemblance. They do not befall the whole human race alike, or any one age, or any one people; but through special circumstances in the condition or constitution of individuals, seize them in the middle of their course, as with a grasp of iron. These deaths as much startle mankind as even those which are more abrupt; and, from their very nature, they are preceded by even less than the usual warnings, by which the probability of sudden dissolution is at some distance dimly intimated. Disease which, however instantaneous its issue, has its root deep in the system, may have given some token of its existence; disease which is the offspring of occasion, can utter no sign till the occasion has arrived and passed. Such are the mortal attacks of fevers. A slight exposure, a cold, an occasion that often cannot be traced, is followed by one of these manifold fires within. They hold within their reach every part which is most needful to the continuance of life; and every organ may be their prey. They are either vehemently infectious; or, like the typhus, capable of communication rather than easily communicated; or not communicable, in any degree which can be appreciated, like the common bilious fevers, and most of the inflammatory maladies. They are often accompanied by delirium; always, sooner or later, by prostration. Under the extreme heat of the attack, life is sometimes, as it were, consumed; at other times it is unable to revive, when all has subsided. A few days, or a fortnight, must commonly decide the recovery or the dissolution. Fever, the result of extreme intoxication, overpowered the strength of Alexander the Great. Henry the First of England died of a fever, caused by indigestion. A fever hurried away the fiery spirit of that martial Pope, Julius the Second. A fever was fatal to the great Emperor, Charles the Fifth. Lord Bacon took a cold through some experiments with snow, and died a week after, of a light fever, which was too much for an enfeebled constitution. A cold, caught on the Thames, caused, by a similar process, the death of Hooker. Bunyan, from exposure in the rain, was in the same manner overtaken by a fatal fever of ten days. Barrow died, rather suddenly, of a malignant fever which affected the brain. A burning fever dried up the energies of Mirabeau, in the midst of his power and renown. Hoche, seized with a cold, through his strenuous exertions, sank under a consequent fever. Putrid fever cut short the days of Akenside, and of Condillac. Kepler, Rapin, Jeremy Taylor, Owen, Thomas Fuller, Glanvil, John Gale, the physician Freind; and the poets Racine, Gay, Prior, Goldsmith, Thomson, Churchill, Burns, Byron, all died of fevers, and most of them in their That violent disease, the pleurisy, removed Corregio the painter, and Barthe the admiral. Mahomet the Second died of a vehement colic. Burckhardt, and Coryate, and many other travellers, have been the victims of dysentery, which closed the career of the royal Saint Louis, on the African coast. Cromwell sank under a tertian ague, and Cardinal Pole under a quartan. Pym, Archbishop Dawes, Hume, the sculptor Bacon, Adam Smith, all died of complaints of the bowels; Boccace, of a disease of the stomach; the Emperor Leopold the Second, of a diarrhoea; Margaret of Valois, of a catarrh; Dacier, of an ulcer in the throat; Limborch, of erisypelas; Dryden and Waterland, of inflammation of the foot, through the growth of the nail into the flesh; Bishops Babington and Senhouse, and Lord Kenyon, of jaundice. The deaths of Francis the First, of Shah Abbas, and of Raphael, are attributed to the disgraceful fruits of vicious indulgence. In youth, or in middle age, and sometimes too in declining years, an accidental sickness thus withdraws men rapidly from their activity, and their usefulness or crimes. The cause seems rather to come from without than from within; or, at least, to be such as might have been avoided, could it have been anticipated, and could all circumstances have been arranged for prevention. Such care, however, and such foreknowledge are themselves impossibilities. Some accidents might be shunned; but no human prudence could anticipate and escape all. Some diseases of this order might be checked at their beginning, or quite prevented by special caution; but the seeds of many are beyond the most penetrating observation. They are a necessary part of the great system of mortality. As men are doomed to die, so a large proportion of their number are to be re |