For three-and-thirty years, our veteran, maiden aunt, Jemima Wycherly, at the close of her annual visit, which seldom fell short of six weeks, in its duration, though it seemed much longer, took each of us by the hand, and, with many tears, commended us fervently to the protecting arm of an overruling Providence, and bade us an eternal farewell!
I have always contemplated the conduct of Charles V. in relation to the rehearsal of his funeral obsequies, as a piece of imperial foolery. “He ordered his tomb to be erected, in the chapel of the monastery. His domestics marched thither in funeral procession, with black tapers in their hands. He himself followed, in his shroud. He was laid in his coffin, with much solemnity. The service for the dead was chanted; and Charles joined in the prayers, which were offered for the rest of his soul, mingling his tears with those, which his attendants shed, as if they had been celebrating a real funeral. The ceremony closed, with sprinkling holy water on the coffin, in the usual form, and, all the assistants retiring, the doors of the chapel were shut. Then Charles rose out of the coffin, and withdrew to his apartment.” Such is the statement of Dr. Robertson.[1]
Notwithstanding this high authority, it is comforting, even at this late day, to believe, that a story, so discreditable to the memory of Charles, is without any substantial foundation. It has ever appeared remarkable, that Bayle should not have alluded to this curious anecdote. After bestowing the highest praise, on Richard Ford’s Hand Book, for Travellers in Spain, the London Quarterly Review[2] furnishes an extract from the work, in which, after giving a minute and interesting account of the convent of St. Yuste, the final retreat of Charles V., Mr. Ford says—“the story of his having had the funeral service said over himself, while alive, is untrue; no record, or tradition of the kind existed among the monks.”
There is something, in these drafts upon posterity, to be accepted and paid, by the present generation, for the honor of the drawer, resembling the conduct of a man, who encroaches on his principal, or who anticipates his revenues.
There is, undoubtedly, a species of luxury in leave-taking. We have delighted, to contemplate the edifying history of that gray-headed old rat, who, weary of the world, and determined to spend the remnant of his days, in pious meditation, took a final and affectionate leave of all his relatives and friends, and retired to a quiet hole—in the recesses of a Cheshire cheese.
However gratified we may be, to witness the second, or third coming of an able, ardent, and ambitious politician, it is not in the gravest nature to restrain a smile, while we contrast that vehemence, which no time can temper—that vis vivida vitæ—ready for all things, in the forum or the field—that unquenchable fire, brightly burning, beneath the frost of more than seventy winters—with those sad infirmities of ace—those silver hairs—that one foot in the grave—the necessity of turning from all sublunary things, and making way for Heaven, under the pale rays of life’s parting sun—those senatorial adieus—and long, last farewells—those solemn prayers and fervent hopes for the happiness of his associates, whom he should meet no more, on this side of the eternal world—those esto perpetuas for his country! How touching these things would be, but for their frequency! What more natural, or more excusable, having enjoyed the luxury of leave-taking, than a desire—after a reasonable interval—to repeat the process, which afforded so much pleasure, and inflicted so little pain!
As to my own comparatively humble relation to the public—parvis componere magna—I am of opinion, that I should gain nothing, by affecting to retire, or by pretending to be dead. As to the former, it may be as truly averred of sextons, as it was, by Mr. Jefferson, of office-holders—“few die and none resign;” and, in respect to the latter, I not only despise the idea of such an imposition upon the public, but have some little fear, that the affectation might be too suddenly followed, by the reality, as Dr. Robertson, rightly or wrongly, affirms it to have been, in the case of Charles the Fifth.
I am now fairly committed, for the first number, at least, of another hundred, but for nothing more. I pretend not to look deeper into futurity, than six feet, which is the depth of a well-made grave. When I shall have completed the second hundred, and commenced upon a third, I shall be well nigh ready to exclaim, in the words of Ovid—
“Vixi
Annos bis centum: nunc tertia vivitur ætas.”
A relation of liberty and equality is decidedly the best, for my reader and for me—I am not constrained to write, nor he to read—if he cannot lie cozily, in a grave of my digging—I do not propose to detain him there—to bury him alive. Dealing with the dead has not hardened my heart. I am a sexton of very considerable sensibility; and have, occasionally, mingled my tears with the earth, as I shovelled it in.