tense sensibility of Jesus made his death like the separation of a universe. It is an affecting peculiarity of man that he shrinks with strong antipathy from the thought of dying alone or among strangers. He would have friendly eyes look on him, feel the clasp of a familiar hand, in that silent immense passage of his being. All things but man, when fatally hurt or spent, retreat to die in solitude; they are afraid of being attacked in their weakness. If a wolf so much as limps, the other wolves tear him in pieces. Instinctively, therefore, the dying animal seeks a secret corner. But man, with a few abnormal exceptions, never wishes to die without some one near to count his sighs, watch his ebbing moments, and mark his last gasp. It is a pathetic proof of his natural sociality. Sympathy is deeper than fear, and in the final failure of his own force, in the upheaval of the bottom of his soul, he puts distrust and hate aside, and clings to his kind with a loving expectation of help. But no companionship of other wisdom or love can avail or endure there. Personal insight and trust of the truth, personal surrender to the Absolute Spirit, these only can stay and comfort then. Though outwardly girt by the fondest comrades, inwardly alone, each one casts his material investiture, eludes their grasp and their gaze, and slips separately into his curtained fate. The loneliness of dying is like the loneliness of the sea, whereon many ships cross and pass without speaking. So do many human beings die simultaneously, but make no signals to each other as the wonted shores recede, and the breath of the Infinite swells the unseen sail, and the gray waste looms in the silence of its immemorial mystery. THE MORALS OF SOLITUDE. The Dangers of Solitude. THE topic next to be treated is the perversions and dangers of solitude. In attempting a general survey and application of the lessons of this part of the subject, scrupulous care is needed to avoid errors and exaggerations. At the start it should be understood that there is no magic in seclusion itself to make any one strong or wise or good. A man may keep by himself because he is a fool or a knave, and become the greater fool or knave by doing so. The benefits of retirement are not the results of a charm, but the fruits of a law faithfully observed. The secrets and blessings resident in solitude must be wrung from it by our energy; they will not spontaneously drop into our laps as we approach, any more than the arrow-headed inscriptions in the desert yielded the ancient history locked up in their cipher to the caravans and armies that for so many ages ignorantly travelled by them. Solitude works on each one and contributes to him after his own kind. It may make a prophet or an idiot. It excites, concentrates, and fortifies the faculties of a strong and studious soul, but bewilders and dissipates those of a weak and wandering one. The great argument against the system of solitary confinement in penitentiaries is that it destroys the minds of those subjected to it. Solitude has imbecility for one of its handmaids. It was found, when the separate and silent system was introduced into the Pennsylvania prison, almost impossible to prevent the convicts from climbing up to the windows to salute each other, and from conversing through the walls of adjacent cells by signals, so fierce was the demand of nature for 'sympathetic communication. We must not let the philosophic and poetic side of the subject fascinate us, and prevent our seeing that all depends on the kind of solitude, the kind of soul, the kind of activity between them. We should remember that there is the solitary worm as well as the solitary eagle. One is more likely to prefer to be alone because he is too poor or too bad to furnish the conditions for agreeable company, than because he cannot find company worthy of him. It is so much easier to get along where there is no one to thwart, contradict, or irk. Wisdom is given to deep reflection, and lonely reflection makes wise. Fools chatter; the gods are silent. Though this is undeniable, there is truth on the other side too. A sage is not unfrequently as talkative as a gossip. Ripe experience is fondly apt to teach. Earnestness is as much akin to oratory as it is to reverie. A busy tongue may be the vehicle, as well as the substitute, for a busy brain. If geese fly in a flock, while the condor preys alone, the moral qualities of the goose are better than those of the condor, and, undoubtedly, it is the happier bird. The portentous gravity of the hermit owl covers not so much wisdom as the frolics of the social swallow. There is no virtue in mere loneliness to dignify the fop or regenerate the fool, to purify a rake or make a soulless hunks a generous lover. And when such as these affect it, the affectation is but another vent of their folly, a trick of vanity. The solitary often occupy themselves with trivialities instead of grandeurs. A famous pillar-saint was observed, on the top of his column, to touch his forehead to his feet twelve hundred and forty-three times without intermission. The emperor .Domitian, whose congested vanity made him ostentatious of courting sage retirement, was discovered in his seclusion stabbing flies with a bodkin. Solitude is the retreat of the defeated as much as it is the home of the self-sufficing. Ignatius Loyola once said to a young member of his order, who, on account of his great susceptibility to anger, was accustomed frequently |