This fine passage is as consolatory in its former part, as it is gloomy at the conclusion; and it is gloomy there, because the view which is there taken is imperfect. Our thoughts, our reminiscences, our intellectual acquirements, die with us to this world,—but to this world only. If they are what they ought to be, they are treasures which we lay up for Heaven. That which is of the earth, earthly, perishes with wealth, rank, honours, authority, and other earthly and perishable things. But nothing that is worth retaining can be lost. When Ovid says in Ben Jonson's play
We pour out our affections with our blood,
And with our blood's affections fade our loves,
the dramatist makes the Roman Poet speak like a sensualist, as he was, and the philosophy is as false as it is foul. Affections well placed and dutifully cherished; friendships happily formed and faithfully maintained; knowledge acquired with worthy intent, and intellectual powers that have been diligently improved as the talents which our Lord and Master has committed to our keeping; these will accompany us into another state of existence, as surely as the soul in that state retains its identity and its consciousness.
INTERCHAPTER IV.
ETYMOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES CONCERNING THE REMAINS OF VARIOUS TRIBES OR FAMILIES MENTIONED IN SCRIPTURAL HISTORY.
All things are big with jest; nothing that's plain
But may be witty, if thou hast the vein.
HERBERT.
That the lost ten Tribes of Israel may be found in London, is a discovery which any person may suppose he has made, when he walks for the first time from the city to Wapping. That the tribes of Judah and Benjamin flourish there is known to all mankind; and from them have sprung the Scripites, and the Omniumites and the Threepercentites.