and consequently it is extremely probable that nothing more was requisite; but the most weighty objection to this opinion is, that the ancient languages afford no terms correspondent to the modern technical phrases of double entry; and Snellius, when he translated "Stevens's Book-keeping" into Latin, after the most scrutinous research for such terms in vain, was compelled to coin them; thus he called the art itself, Apologistica; the Waste Book, Liber Deletitius; the Ledger, Codex accepti exponsique; Stock, Sors; Balance Epilogismus, &c.

Indeed the terms adopted in most of the European languages appear to be derived immediately from the Italian, with the exception of the English word Ledger, which has exhibited as much variation in the orthography as it has occasioned disputes about its etymology; -it was formerly spelt Leager, Leadger, Leidger, Leiger, Leger, and lastly Ledger -its name in the Italian and southern languages of Europe implies the master book; in the German and other northern provinces the head book; and in the Dutch and French the grand book. As to its derivation, Bailey refers it to the Latin verb legere, to gather: but Dr. Johnson says, it is so from the Dutch leggen, to continue in one place; while some others again have conjectured it arose from the liege books of the feudal ages, which recorded the rents, duties, and services due from the liege men (or tenants).

Having thus advanced the arguments pro and con., as to the claims of the ancients to a knowledge of this art, I proceed to submit some conjectures in favour of the moderns; perhaps it is not at all improbable that the principle of double entry was suggested by the double purpose of bills of exchange, and the ordinary way of entering them; these we know are decidedly a modern invention, or it might possibly have been deduced from some of Euclid's axioms, or by the operations of algebraic equations; in support of the last opinion the following circumstance is remarkably apposite:

icas de Borgo, an Italian friar, was

the first who translated Algebra from the Arabic into any of the European languages: he was one of the earliest writers on several other mathematical subjects, and is generally supposed to have composed the first express treatise on this science. It was published in his native language (the Italian) in 1495, which is nearly the most distant period to which we can with certainty trace back the origin of book-keeping; and thus much for the claims of the moderns for this invention. Let the reader settle the point in dispute.

Assuming then the prior part of the fifteenth century (as has been already remarked) to be the origin of this science, I now endeavour to follow its progress in this country: and although the southern parts of Europe were acquainted with book-keeping by the Italian manner at the above-mentioned period, it appears that the knowledge was diffused but slowly; for we find nothing of it in England till 1543, when the first English work on this subject was published at London, by Hugh Oldcastle, a school-master, which was much improved, and reprinted by John Mellis (also a school-master) in 1588. The curious reader may find some account of this work in "Aymes's Antiquities of Typography," where a copy of the title is thus given:-"A briefe instructione and maner howe to kepe bookes of accomptes partible, &c., by three bookes, named ye memoriall, jornall, and leager.-Newley augmented and sette forthe by John Mellis, schole maister of London:-imprynted by hime at ye signe of ye White Beare, nighe Baynard's Castel, 1588."

The next treatise of which we have any account, was by James Peele; and this was also published in London, in 1569: in his preface, he says, "though long practised in foreign parts, this art was but then new in England !"

This work was succeeded in 1652 by a considerably improved system, in a large treatise by John Collins, a very celebrated mathematician, whose publication served as a standard book nearly a century.

These were the principal early En

glish writers on this art, during the first two centuries since its introduction to this country; which again received much improvement, in a well-known popular work, published 1736, by John Mais, a professor of mathematics at Perth; from this period numerous were the authors upon this subject, but they followed each other so closely, both in manner and matter, that very little benefit arose from their productions; to give a list would be tedious, but the most approved of them are Dodson, Donn, Dowling, Dilworth, Crosby, Cooke, Hamilton, Hatton, London, Miers, Malcolm, Stevens, Snell, Webster, Wood, &c., whose treatises all appeared from 1720 to 1770.

Hitherto the writers upon bookkeeping were all teachers, and although as such, they were competent to explain the principles, they had not the means of practically proving their theories; and, consequently their works were but an indifferent preparative for the counting-house. This defect was supplied in 1789, by a judicious and elaborate work by Benjamin Booth, a merchant, whose treatise has enabled later authors to combine the theory and elementary precepts of the instructor with the improvements resulting from actual mercantile experience; so that in modern works the former has gone hand in hand with the latter.

Before concluding the subject, it may not be amiss to mention the prospectus of a plan published in 1796, to rival the Italian mode, called "The English Bookkeeping," by a Mr. Jones; who, therein, boldly represented "the Italian system as delusive and erroneous," and announced his own as an infallible plan by single entry.

the

Under the sanction of some eminent names as recommenders, subscriptions at a guinea each were raised to the enormous sum of nearly £7,000! Public impatience was very great for appearance of the work, which was somehow delayed much beyond the appointed time, and many considered the whole as a hoax; at last, however, it came forth, and completely disappointed public expectation. Several

pamphlets attacking Mr. Jones's book appeared, and produced others as warm in its defence; thus causing some controversy between the partizans of the old and new system; at length, a gentleman of the name of Mill gained the triumph of the Italian over the English mode, and formed a due comparison of their respective claims, by arranging the whole of Mr. Jones's work into a Journal and Ledger by double entry.

DEATH.

As the word Life is employed in a double sense to denote the actions or phenomena by which it is developed, and the cause of these phenomena, so the old English word Death is used familiarly to express two or more meanings. The first of these is the transition from the living to the lifeless or inanimate state-the act, that is, of dying; the second, the condition of an organised body which has ceased to live, while organisation yet remains, and symmetry still displays itself, and the admirable structure of its parts is not yet destroyed by decomposition, or resolved into the original and primary elements from which it was moulded, "Before Decay's effacing fingers

Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.' We occasionally speak of "dead matter" in the sense of inorganic; but this is merely a rhetorical or metaphorical phrase. That which has never lived cannot properly be said to be dead.

In the following essay I shall use the word chiefly in the first of the senses above indicated. It will often be convenient to employ it in the second also; but in doing so I will be careful so to designate its bearing as to avoid any confusion. The context will always prevent any misunderstanding on this point.

Death may be considered physiologically, pathologically, and psychologically. We are obliged to regard it, and speak of it, as the uniform correlative, and, indeed, the necessary consequence, or final result of life; the act of dying as the rounding off, or termination, of the act of living. But it ought to be remarked, that this conclusion is derived, not from any understanding or

comprehension of the relevancy of the asserted connexion, nor from any à priori reasoning applicable to the inquiry, but merely à posteriori as the result of universal experience. All that has lived has died; and, therefore, all that lives must die.

The solid rock on which we tread, and with which we rear our palaces and temples, what is it often when microscopically examined, but a congeries of the fossil remains of innumerable animal tribes! The soil from which, by tillage, we derive our vegetable food, is scarcely anything more than a mere mixture of the decayed and decaying fragments of former organic being; the shells and exuviæ, the skeletons and fibres and exsiccated juices of extinct life.

The earth itself, in its whole habitable surface, is little else than the mighty sepulchre of the past; and

"All that tread

The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings-yet, the dead are there;
And millions in these solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone."

Four millions of Egyptians cultivate the valley of the great river on whose banks, amidst the fertilising dust of myriads of their progenitors, there are calculated still to exist, in a state of preservation, not less than from four hundred to five hundred millions of mummies. The "City of the Tombs" is far more populous than the neighbouring streets even of crowded Constantinople; and the cemetries of London and the catacombs of Paris are filled to overflowing. The trees which gave shade to our predecessors of a few generations back lie prostrate; and the dog and horse, the playmate and the servant of our childhood are but dust. Death surrounds and sustains us. We derive our nourishment from the destruction of living organisms, and from this source alone.

And who is there among us that has reached the middle term of existence,

that may not, in the touching phrase of Carlyle, " measure the various stages of his life-journey by the white tombs of his beloved ones, rising in the distance like pale, mournfully receding milestones?"

"When Wilkie was in the Escurial," says Southey, "looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper in the refectory there, an old Jeronymite monk said to him, 'I have sat daily in sight of that picture for now nearly threescore years; during that time my companions have dropped off one after another-all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many or most, of those who were younger than myself; more than one generation had passed away, and there the figures in the picture have remained unchanged. I look at them, tili I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but shadows.'

I have stated that there is no reason known to us why Death should always "round the sum of life." Up to a certain point of their duration, varying in each separate set of instances, and in the comparison of extremes varying prodigiously, the vegetable and animal organisms not only sustain themselves, but expand and develope themselves, grow and increase, enjoying a better and better life, advancing and progressive. Wherefore is it that at this period all progress is completely arrested; that thenceforward they waste, deteriorate, and fail? Why should they thus de cline and decay with unerring uni formity upon their attaining their highest perfection, their most intenso activity? This ultimate law is equally mysterious and inexorable. It is true the Sacred Writings tell us of Enoch, "whom God took, and he was not; and of Elijah, who was transported through the upper air in a chariot of fire; and of Melchizedek, the most extraordinary personage whose name is recorded, "without father, without mother, without descent: having neither beginning of days, nor end of life." We read the history without conceiving the faintest hope from these exceptions to the universal rule. Yet our fancy has

always exulted in visionary evasions of it, by forging for ourselves creations of immortal maturity, youth, and beauty, residing in Elysian fields of unfading spring, amidst the fruition of perpetual vigour. We would drink, in imagination, of the sparkling fountain of rejuvenescence; nay, boldly dare the terror of Medea's cauldron. We echo, in every despairing heart, the ejaculation of the expiring Wolcott, "Bring back my youth!"

Reflection, however, cannot fail to reconcile us to our ruthless destiny. There is another law of our being, not less unrelenting, whose yoke is even harsher and more intolerable, from whose pressure Death alone can relieve us, and in comparison with which the absolute certainty of dying becomes a glorious blessing. Of whatever else we may remain ignorant, each of us, for himself, comes to feel, realise, and know unequivocally that all his capacities, both of action and enjoyment, are transient, and tend to pass away; and when our thirst is satiated, we turn disgusted from the bitter lees of the once fragrant and sparkling cup. I am aware of Parnell's offered analogy

'The tree of deepest root is found Unwilling most to leave the ground;" and of Rush's notion, who imputes to the aged such an augmenting love of life that he is at a loss to account for it, and suggests, quaintly enough, that it may depend upon custom, the great moulder of our desires and propensities; and that the infirm and decrepit "love to live on, because they have acquired a habit of living." His assumption is wrong in point of fact. He loses sight of the important principle that old age is a relative term, and that one man may be more superannuated, further advanced in natural decay at sixty, than another at one hundred years. Parr might well rejoice at being alive, and exult in the prospect of continuing to live, at one hundred and thirty, being capable, as is affirmed, even of the enjoyment of sexual life at that age; but he who has had his "three sufficient warnings," who is deaf, lame, and blind;

who, like the monk of the Escurial, has lost all his contemporaries, and is condemned to hopeless solitude, and oppressed with the consciousness of dependence and imbecility, must look on Death not as a curse, but a refuge. Of one hundred and thirty-three suicides occurring in Geneva from 1825 to 1834, more than half were above fifty years of age; thiry-four, from fifty-five to sixty; nineteen, from sixty to seventy; nine, from seventy to eighty; three, from eighty to ninety; in all, sixty-five. The mean term of life in that city being about thirty-five to forty, this bears an immense proportion to the actual population above fifty, and exhibits forcibly an opposite condition of feeling to that alleged by Rush, a weariness of living, a desire to die, rather than an anxiety, or even willingness to live.

I once knew an old man, of about one hundred and four, who retained many of his faculties. He could read ordinary print without glasses, walked firmly, rode well, and could even leap with some agility. When I last parted with him, I wished him twenty years more; upon which he grasped my hand closely, and declared he would not let me go until I had retracted or reversed the prayer.

Strolling with my venerable and esteemed colleague, Professor Stephen Elliott, one afternoon, through a field on the banks of the river Ashley, we came upon a negro basking in the sun, the most ancient-looking personage I have ever seen. Our attempts, with his aid, to calculate his age, were, of course conjectural; but we were satisfied that he was far above one hundred. Bald, toothless, nearly blind, bent almost horizontally, and scarcely capable of locomotion, he was absolutely alone in the world, living by permission upon a place, from which the generation to which his master and fellow-servants belonged had long since disappeared. He expressed many an earnest wish for death, and declared emphatically, that he" was afraid God Almighty had forgotten him."

We cannot wonder that the ancients should believe, "Whom the gods love,

die young," and are ready to say, with Southey himself, subsequently, like poor Swift, a melancholy example of the truth of his poetical exclamation,

"They who reach Grey hairs die piecemeal.'

Sacred history informs us, that, in the infancy of the world, the physiological tendency to death was far less urgently and early developed than it is now. When the change took place is not stated; if it occurred gradually, the downward progress has been long since arrested. All records make the journey of life, from the time of Job and the early patriarchs, much the same as the pilgrim of to-day is destined to travel. Threescore and ten was, when Cheops built his pyramid, as it is now, a long life. Legends, antique and modern, do indeed tell us of tribes that, like Riley's Arabs and the serfs of Middle Russia, and the Ashantees and other Africans, live two or three centuries; but these are travellers' stories, unconfirmed. The various statistical tables that have been in modern times made up from materials more or less authentic, and the several inquiries into the general subject of longevity, seem to lead to the gratifying conclusion that there is rather an increase of the average or mean duration of civilised life. In 1806, Duvillard fixed the average duration of life in France at twentyeight years: in 1846, Bousquet estimated it at thirty-three. Mallet calculated that the average life of the Genevese had extended ten years in three generations. In Farr's fifth report (for 1844), the "probable duration," the "expectation of life" in England, is placed above forty, a great improvement within half a century. It is curious, if it be true, that the extreme term seems to lessen as the average thus increases. Mallet is led to this opinion from the fact, among others, that in Geneva, coincident with the generally favourable change abovementioned, there has not been a singie centenarian within twenty-seven years; such instances of longevity having been formerly no rarer there than elsewhere. Birds and fishes are said to be the

longest lived animals. For the longevity of the latter, ascertained in fish-ponds, Baeon gives the whimsical reason that, in the moist element which surrounds them, they are protected from exsiccation, of the vital juices, and thus preserved. This idea corresponds very well with the stories told of the uncalculated ages of some of the inhabitants of the bayous of Louisiana, and of the happy ignorance of that region, where a traveller once found a withered and antique corpse so goes the talesitting propped in an arm-chair among his posterity, who could not comprehend why he slept so long and so soundly.

But the Hollanders and Burmese do not live especially long; and the Arab, always lean and wiry, leads a protracted life amidst his arid sands. Nor can we thus account for the lengthened age of the crow, the raven, and the eagle, which are affirmed to hold out for two or three centuries.

There is the same difference among shrubs and trees, of which some are annual, some of still more brief exist ence, and some almost eternal. The venerable oak bids defiance to the storms of a thousand winters; and the Indian baobab is set down as a contemporary at least of the Tower of Babel, having tolerably braved, like the more transient, though long-enduring olive, the very waters of the great deluge.

It will be delightful to know-will Science ever discover for us-what con stitutes the difference thus impressed upon the long and short-lived races of the organised creation? Why must the fragrant shrub or georgous flower-plant die immediately after performing its function of continuing the species, and the pretty ephemeron languish into non-existence just as it flutters through its genial hour of love, and grace, and enjoyment; while the banyan, and the chesnut, the tortoise, the vulture, and the carp, formed of the same primary material elements, and subsisting upon the very same resources of nutrition and supply, outlast them so indefinitely

Death from old age, from natural