That good old man Bassus, (though with one foot in the grave,) how cheerful a mind does he bear. He lives in the view of death, and contemplates his own end with less concern of thought or countenance, than he would do another man’s. It is a hard lesson, and we are a long time a learning of it, to receive our death without trouble, especially in the case of Bassus: in other deaths there is a mixture of hope—a disease may be cured, a fire quenched, a falling house either propped or avoided, the sea may swallow a man and throw him up again, a pardon may interpose twixt the ax and the body—but in the case of old age there is no place for either hope or intercession.