OUR LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

Southland Times, Issue 575, 8 October 1866, Page 3

OUR LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

When our attendant sattelites revolve in quite other orbits, when we are slowly returning to our original dust to rest unfurrowed in " G-od's acre" till the coming of the heavenly husbandman, our last "Will is the moving cause of hopes, and fears, and passions, and to some extent agitates aud deranges society. A man's will is nearly certain to contain some slight indications of character, unless, indeed, it be made in time of sickness, or in terror at the " imago mortis." There would seem to be no reason for hypocrisy in matters which cannot see the light until after our death ; in them, at least, all that glozing pliability with which we meet the word, or that fraction, with large denominator, of humanity which stands us in that stead, all masks of f.u'r seeming and tricks of courtesy might, we should think, be laid aside. We have here an opportunity of exhibiting ourselves to our friends as they have never known us, butas we have known ourselves and as nature and the influences of the world have fashioned us. A mean, pitiful scoundrel will enjoy by anticipation the chagrin of those in whose minds he may have excited expectations which he meant to disappoint, and will exact to the last scruple all that supple fawning and abject servility from which a golden result if fondly expected. A good man, on the other hand, will scrupulously abstain from raising vain hopes, and to no one, therefore, will he be a cause of mortification, " weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth." We have heard a great deal lately about Napoleon, who was, of course a great man, and not the less because his companions were Famine, Disease, aud Death, and his enemies Happiness, and the Sisters of Peace. That great men can do mean actions we know from the experience of history, but not even the authority of the third Napoleon — master of many legions, Colossus of modern Europe as he may be — shall persuade us that the acts are less mean because they were committed by great men. By the will of Napoleon, which was made at St. Helena, and may be seen at Doctors' Commons, he bequeathed 10,000 francs to the man who attempted to assassinate tlie only enemy he ever feared. So low did he stoop — he, the greatest captain of his age, the cynosure of a world's regards, the genius of destiny to millions of people whom the eulogy of partisanship would exalt to the majesty of a demigod! Yes, this is the conqueror of Wagrain and Austerlitz ; but the victorious c gles, the captured cannon, the awful uaraphhernalia aud stage properties of war, no longer attend him ; it the man Napoleon alone with himself. Grood Izaak Wilton — dear to the memory of anglers, the biographer of Hooker and Dorme — concerns himself in his Will for the benefit of certain poor and deserving people; and Samuel Johnson takes care that so far as lies in his power his faithful negro servant, Frank, shall not know the misery of want. These are the figures which, when the history of the world shall be written in a proper spirit, will stand out in its pages clear and bright aad eternal. — Family JTi'iend.