Death—and Afterwards. By Ed win Arnold. (Trfibner and Co.) —Mr.
Arnold has done well to reprint this suggestive essay from the Fortnightly Review. It is a powerful argument in behalf of a truth which, however strong our motives for believing it, is always becoming vague and doubtful to us. Every religion in the world makes it, in some sort, its foundation ; but Nature's "conspiracy of silence" about a life beyond the grave is again and again too much for our faith. We do not see the justification for saying that "Pliny, from much clinical observation, declared his opinion that the moment of death was the most exquisite instant of life." Pliny was an official (see his nephew's account of his occupations, " Epist.," 6), not a physician, and after all, he says nothing more than "non nunquam etiam cum ipsa voluntate," a very much more moderate phrase than "the moat exquisite instant."
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