The court of Cacus, or, the story of Burke and Hare / by Alexander Leighton.

  • Leighton, Alexander, 1800-1874.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The court of Cacus, or, the story of Burke and Hare / by Alexander Leighton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    which are the fashionable tribute paid by vice to virtue. If he was not thus unable to forget the enormous debt due by his fearful associate, he was, and continued to the end to be, not less mindful of his paramour. He sent his watch and what money he possessed to her— Poor thing, it is all I have to give to her; it will be of some use to her, and I will not need it. Yet no moisture of the eyes— the pity was only the bastard offspring of animal love. Withal, we are frank to admit that even the breaking down of the adamant, to the extent of confession and regret, in a man like Burke, was a triumph to religion. There is no natural way of accounting for that pheno- menon of which every man is doomed to feel the experi- ence, that while death asserts his power over the body, he extorts a contribution from the soul. Turn the question in any way you please, your final cause is nowhere, unless it be that the experience of agonised death-beds is the opportunity of virtue—a poor back-handed way of making people better, and certainly bought at a terrible expense. But even taking the advantage in this limited form, it does not exhaust the conditions of the question; for while the dying sinner is altogether unconscious that his agonies will go forth to the world and be an example, his mind is in another direction. He looks forward, and the more keenly, that he cannot look backwards. Where is the final cause now? Try again, and we suspect you will find it only in heaven.