The Emperor Adrian, dying, made that celebrated address to his soul, which is so happily translated by Pope, in the following words:

Vital spark of heav'nly flame, Quit, oh quit this mortal frame. Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, Oh the pain, the bliss of dying ! Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say, Sister spirit, come away. What is this absorbs me quite? Steals my senses, shuts my sight ? Drowns my spirits, draws my breath Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes ; it disappears ! Heav'n opens on my eyes ! my ears

With sounds seraphic ring: Lend, lend your wings ! I mount! I fly ! O Grave ! where is thy victory ?

O Death ! where is thy sting ?

Lucan, when he had his veins opened by order of Nero, expired reciting a passage from his Pharsalia, in which he has described the wound of a dying soldier. Petronius did the same thing on the same occasion.

Patris, a poet of Caen, perceiving himself expiring, composed some verses which are justly admired. In this little poem he relates a dream, in which he appeared to be placed next to a beggar, when, having addressed him in the haughty strain he would probably have employed on this side of the grave, he received the following reprimand :

"Here all are equal; now thy lot is mine ! "I on my dunghill, as thou art on thine."

Des Barreaux, it is said, wrote, on his death-bed, that so -net which is well known, and which is translated in the "Spectator."

Margaret of Austria, when she was nearly perishing in a storm at sea, composed for herself the following epitaph in verse :

"Beneath this tomb is high-born Margaret laid, "Who had two husbands, and yet died a maid."

She was betrothed to Charles VIII. of France, who forsook her. Being next intended for the Spanish Infant, in her voyage to Spain she wrote these lines in a storm.

Roscommon, at the moment he expired, with an energy of voice (says his biographer) that expressed the most fervent devotion, uttered two lines of his own version of "Dies Irae!"

Waller, in his last moments, repeated some lines from Virgil : and Chaucer took his farewell of all human vanities by a moral ode, entitled, "A ballad made by Geffrey Chauycer upon his dethe-bedde lying in his grete anguysse."

"The muse that has attended my course (says the dying Gleim, in a letter to Klopstock) still hovers round my steps to the very verge of the grave." A collection of songs, composed by old Gleim on his death-bed, it is said, were intended to be published.

Chatellard, a French gentleman, beheaded in Scotland, for having loved the Queen, and even for having attempted her honour, Brantome says, would not have any other viaticum than a poem of Ronsard. When he ascended the scaffold, he took the hymns of this poet, and for his consolation read that on death ; which, he says, is well adapted to conquer its fear. He preferred the poems of Ronsard to either a prayer-book or his confessor: such was his passion.

The Marquis of Montrose, when he was condemned by his judges to have his limbs nailed to. the gates of four cities, the brave soldier said that, "he was sorry he had not limbs sufficient to be nailed to all the gates of the cities in Europe, as monuments of his loyalty. As he proceeded to his execution, he put this thought into beautiful verse.

Philip Strozzi, when imprisoned by Cosmo the First, great Duke of Tuscany, was apprehensive of the danger to which he might expose his friends, (who had joined in his conspiracy against the duke,) from the confessions which the rack might extort from him. Having attempted every exertion for the liberty of his country, he considered it no crime therefore to die. He resolved on suicide. With the point of the sword, with which he killed himself, he first engraved on the mantle-pieca of the chimney, this verse of Virgil:

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultoi. Rise, some avenger, from our blood!

Such persons realize that beautiful fiction of the ancients, who represent the swans of Cayster singing at their death; and have been compared to the nightingale singing with a thorn on its breast.

The following anecdotes are of a different complexion : they may perhaps excite a smile. We have given them the title of Grammatical Deaths.

Pere Bouhours was a French grammarian, who had been justly accused of paying too scrupulous an attention to the * Klopstock's Death in " L'Allemagne;" vol. i. p. 262.

minutiae of letters. He was more solicitous of his words than his thoughts. It is said, that when he was dying, he called out to his friends (a correct grammarian to the last,) "Je Vas, ou je Vais mourir; fun ou Vautre se dit

When Malherbe was dying, he reprimanded his nurse for making use of a solecism in her language ! And when his con-fessor represented to him the felicities of a future state in low expressions, the dying critic interrupted him: "Hold your tongue," he said, "your wretched style only makes me out of conceit with them!"

Several Persons Of Science Have Died In A Scientific Manner. - Haller, the greatest of physicians, beheld his end approach with the utmost composure. He kept feeling his pulse to the last moment, and when he found that life was almost gone, he turned to his brother physician, and observed, " My friend, the artery ceases to beat," - and almost instantly expired.

De Lagny, who was intended by his friends for the study of the law, having fallen on an Euclid, found it so congenial to his disposition, that he devoted himself to mathematics. In his last moments, when he retained no further recollection of the friends who surrounded his bed, one of them, perhaps to make a philosophical experiment, thought proper to ask him the square of 12 ; the dying mathematician instantly, and perhaps without knowing that he answered it, replied, "144."

The following lines, from the pen of Mrs. Barbauld, in an address to the Deity, express the desires and hopes of a real Christian in the contemplation of death :

"O when the last, the closing hour draws nigh, And earth recedes before my swimming eye; When trembling on the doubtful edge of fate, I stand, and stretch my view to either state ; Teach me to quit this transitory scene With decent triumph and a look serene; Teach me to fix my ardent hopes on high, And, having liv'd to thee, in thee to die &