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112 ShakspeareShakespeare [sic] passed from the stage of this life's drama, Milton was but a boy of eight years old. Thus, men of great and lofty minds, who happen to live in different times, cannot meet on earth; and consequently great geniuses are commonly solitary beings in their own generation, and have few or no congenial spirits with whom to exchange high thoughts and sympathies. They flourish "alone in their glory," and that glory too often a barren and joyless fame. But how different must it be in the other state of existence—in the spiritual and eternal world! When the man of genius dies, or, in other words, departs from this earth, and enters upon the spiritual state of existence, he but goes to join the great society of lofty spirits that are already assembled there, and, as it were, waiting for him. When the good man leaves this lower world, he goes to join "the spirits of just men made perfect," who have gone before him, "the innumerable, company of angels." He departs from London or Boston, or other city of this earth, only to enter into the "city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." And how much more populous, how much more glorious, must that heavenly city be than any earthly one! Had the pious Johnson fully reflected upon this great truth,—had he not been oppressed by gloomy fears, arising in part from his melancholic temperament,—had he seen whither he was going,—O, could he have wished still to stay under the dun skies of even his loved London, carrying about, too, the load of a diseased and worn out body? Would he not have joyfully thrown off that load, at the call from above,—and soaring on the wings of faith and love have darted away into the realms of light, like the eagle ascending to the