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THEIR LAST WORDS. 'The Deathbed Speeches of the Great In History. Cynics there may be, who will as cribe to the inventive faculties of pos terity the words which generations of mankind have reverenced at the last utterances of the world's great men. To the worst of them perhaps even the last poignant cry of the murder ed Julius, or the pathetic tenderness of Nelson's farewell to Hardy, may seem no more than figments of the dramatic historian. Yet, as we like to hope, to the majority these utter ances are the ipsisima verba of those to whom they are attributed, and worthy of especial veneration in that through them the characters of those who speak at this, often the most se rious. erisis of life, th' passing from it. and revealed. Who finds it hard to believe the ac count given of the death of Cromwell by Carlyle's "Writer of our old Pam phlet." of the saying "God is good," which he frequently used all along; and would speak it with much cheer fulness and fervor of spirit, in the midst of his pains: and how "towards morning he used divers holy expres sions, implying much inward consola tion and peace." among the rest speaking ''some exceeding self-debas ing words, annihilating and judging himself. Our last glimpse of Richelieu shows him still the statesman absorbed in ,public affair-. and offering to thq world a spectacle of iron resolution and unruffled composure. Among his last words was his reply, recorded by Mme. De Motteville, when asked if he pardoned his enemies:-"I have had no enemies except those of the state." It is the man rather than the states -man that we see in the touching pic ture drawn for us by the Comte De Brienne of Mararin in hig last hours. Death overtakes him in the midst of his splendor, triumphant at last over .all his enemies, and no less the real ruler of France than his illustrious predecessor. But it is not on France that his last thoughts are fixed. In spired as he was by i genuine love of art, though even here are to be found traces of that avarice . .ich disfigur-I ed his character, ?1e had amassed in his palace priceless treasures in pict nres, tapestry and the goldsmith's art. The thought of these drags him from iis bed. and he forces himself pain Tully along, murmuring as he stops before one treasure after another, "Il faut quitter tout cela, il faut quitter tout cela." Characteristic, too, is the deathbed tirade of Queen Elizabeth, when the name of Beauchamp is suggested to her as that of her successor: "I will have no rascal's son in my seat, but one worthy to be a king."' All througha her reign she had indignantly resisted the attempts of parliament and the -nation to settle the questions of her mnarriage and the succession. The dry humor of the monarch who never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one did not fail him when, amid the tortures of a painful death, he apologized to his courtien- for "the unconscionable time he took in dying," an~d the keynote of hih life is s;ruel: in his last words to his -tue cessor, to whom he bequeaths no n:ax imof stateeraft, l( no essana to his people. but a prayer not to "let poor 'N elly starve.'' The true Roman spirit was shown by the Emperor Vespasian as, in his last delirium. he struggled to rise, saying that an Imperator should die standing; while his last words. "Ut puto, deas fio" (Methinks I become god"), are characteristic. The traditional death words of Ne -ro. "What an artist I am to perish." u.ttered as, paralyzed with terror, he grovelled on straw to hide even from his slaves, are less worthy of credence It is more reasona:ble to suppose that in the face of death, with no flatterer - to interpose the lying mirror he would .see himself more nearly as he was. We cannot leave the Roman em perors wit.hout quoting tihe verses with which the contemplation of death inspired the Emperor Hardrian The naivete of their expression and their almost childlike simplicity form a striking contrast with the pomp and ;gravity of an imperial deathbed. The translation, good as it is, fails ade -quately to- reproduce the tone of wist ful musing and the playfulness, with its undercurrent of melancholy, of the original: Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one, Soul of mine, pretty one, flitting one, Whither wilt thou hie away Pallid one, rigid one, naked one Nevar to play again,'never to play. A-styp-to-dyn. 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