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160 which morbid debility either escapes, or entertains in a mitigated and supportable degree. Yet are we justified, when reconciling ourselves to our lot as men, rather than arguing as philosophers, in fostering those expectations, not merely which are in their own nature proveable, but which are not actually disproved by any positive evidence. It is in this loose and popular sense only, that I mean to hazard the remark in question. At all events, it has been among our most available consolations to believe, that the cause of our calamity was neither inherited, nor derived from any constitutional defect. Still more is it essential to our peace of mind to be convinced, that it was not brought on by any injudicious efforts of ours, to push his intellectual ambition beyond the limits of his physical strength. To what then do we attribute it? With all becoming diffidence, on a subject so enveloped and mysterious as that of life or death, we venture to place it among those accidents in the system, to which the old