DEATH.
"Death is a road our dearest friends have gone;
Why, with such leaders, fear to say 'Lead on?'
Its gate repels, lest it too soon be tried;
But turns in balm on the immortal side.
Mothers have pass'd it; fathers; children: men,
Whose like we look not to behold again;
Women, that smiled away their loving breath.—
Soft is the traveling on the road of Death.
But guilt has passed it? Men not fit to die?
Oh, hush—for He that made us all, is by.
Human were all; all men; all born of mothers;
All our own selves, in the worn-out shape of others;
Our used, and oh! be sure, not to be ill-used brothers."
—Leigh Hunt.
So perfect were the Egyptians in the manufacture of perfumes that some of their ancient ointment, preserved in an alabaster vase, in the museum of Alnwick, still retains a powerful odor, though it must be within 2,000 and 3,000 years old.