the Eastern lands, Egypt, Assyria, India, China, were soon the seats of mighty empires; of which some were for a time, and others have been to this day, obeyed by the most compact and multitudinous populations. The remoter lands were more gradually and more thinly peopled, and the history of many generations is covered with impenetrable darkness; but except among the wildest barbarians, the population supposed before accurate knowledge could be obtained has commonly been less than that which actually appeared after better inquiry. It will not be an extravagant, although an uncertain computation, if the average number of each generation be reckoned at one fifth of the present; and then the entire number would be twenty-eight thousands of millions. To admit such a number into the imagination, we can conceive that twenty-eight of the chief empires of the earth contained each a hundred provinces, and that each of these provinces contained five cities of the magnitude of London. These fourteen thousand Londons could perhaps embrace the armies of the dead. The city of Nineveh must have been inhabited, through several ages, by more than five hundred thousand persons; and probably its mounds look down upon what remains of six or seven millions. A still vaster multitude is covered by the desolate plain of Babylon. Not less than fifteen millions of bodies must, in the space of twenty-five centuries, have been mingled with the dust of Christian and Pagan Rome. At least half as many more must sleep under the new Rome of Constantine. Some of the great capitals of the remote East bury several millions in a century. But, in truth, the bones of hosts more numerous than ever stood living on one spot have been laid beneath many a fair town whose inhabitants may scarce ever have thought how the progress of ages had made their home so prodigious a sepulchre. Two millions of skulls are arranged in the catacombs of Paris. The ten thousand parishes of England contain ten thousand churchyards; and the clay of every churchyard contains a part of thousands of frames, once warm and buoyant. It is enough to make the simple comparison between the present population of any old district or town, and its collective population in all the past; and the mind will grasp the superior number of the dead beyond the living. "All that tread The globe, are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom." The surface of the earth, so far as it is dry land, is estimated at nearly forty millions of square miles. If twenty-eight thousands of millions of inhabitants have sojourned upon it, and could once more be distributed over it, every square mile would receive seven hundred persons. The average population of England is about two hundred and sixty for a square mile, that of the whole territory of the United States less than eight. Could the dead live again upon the earth, they would make every spot almost three times as populous as the British isles, and almost a hundred fold more than the American Republic. On individuals so numberless the decree that sends man to his dust has already passed into execution. The dead exceed fivefold the minutes since the creation; and in the last hour more than three thousand bodies must have fallen. Every year, one individual amongst twenty-seven dies in Russia and in the city of New York: one amongst thirty in Greece: one amongst thirty-two in Sicily: one amongst thirty-six in Prussia : one amongst thirty-nine in France and Holland: one amongst forty-two in Philadelphia: one amongst fortythree in Belgium: one amongst fifty-three in England. Till the end of time this mighty train must be swelled by all who shall live: the extent of the procession can be known only when it has completely passed. So immeasurable has been the triumph of the last enemy of man, while but those two exceptions forbid us to name it universal. One was “translated that he should not see death;" the other "went up by a whirlwind into heaven," with "a chariot of fire, and horses of fire;" that what, in the last day, shall be seen in millions, might already have been recorded of more than one. V. Che Period of Death. "As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes By those who in their turn, shall follow them." BRYANT. THE period at which man should return to dust was left under a solemn uncertainty. Time would reveal the thousand methods in which it could be hastened by every possible agency in earth and air, around and within; and would fix the limits beyond which, when every hazard should be escaped, the issue could no longer be delayed. The utmost length and the average length of human life were then the secrets of the unfolding future, as now they are the results of the recorded past. Amongst those eight antediluvian patriarchs who completed the natural term of their days, he who died youngest was seven hundred and seventy-seven years old, and he who lived longest was nine hundred and sixty-nine. It is as if one now alive could have seen the face of one who had witnessed the crucifixion. Although the years of Methuselah have surpassed those of every other mortal, yet as Adam began his existence in full maturity, and then lived through nine hundred and thirty years, the most protracted resistance to decay may thus have been allotted to the frame of our first father. So far as life, amongst the wicked of the antediluvian world, was not extinguished by violence, the general length of the days of man must have been ten times their present duration a space sufficient, had intellectual vigour been widely developed, to have comprehended the most amazing works of toil and skill, the profoundest discoveries in science, and enterprises and achievements of magnificence since unparalleled. But that world left neither pyramids nor books; and if great exploits of intellect were not attempted, tremendous, no doubt, must have been the progress of brutality and crime, when the body had such might, and when death and judgment were so distant. There were giants in the earth in those days, men of renown; but the wickedness of man was great, all flesh corrupted his way, the earth was filled with violence, and that mighty race was doomed to death without posterity. The descendants of Noah, the second father of mankind, were permitted to add to that nourishment from the fruits of the earth, which had been assigned to Adam, the flesh of all animals. But it was not in the design that new vigour should be given to their bodily system, which was rather destined to yield more and more rapidly, till their days should at length be fixed at threescore years and ten. The son of Noah died at six hundred; the grandson of that son, at four hundred and thirty-three; the grandson of that grandson at two hundred and thirtynine; the patriarch of the third generation after, at a hundred and forty-eight; and then the ages of Terah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were two hundred and five, a hundred and seventy-five, a hundred and eighty, a hundred and forty-seven, and a hundred and ten. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, the common term of life was already as brief as now; and though |