humanity, where it would no longer peer in monumental pomp over their heads; and that too when on the point of death themselves, in articulo mortis, oh! it would be madness, waste, extravagance, impiety!—Thus worldlings feel and argue without knowing it; and while they fancy they are studying their own interest or that of some booby successor, their alter idem, are but the dupes and puppets of a favourite idea, a phantom, a prejudice, that must be kept up somewhere (no matter where), if it still plays before and haunts their imagination while they have sense or understanding left—to cling to their darling follies.
There was a remarkable instance of this tendency to the heap, this desire to cultivate an abstract passion for wealth, in a will of one of the Thelussons some time back. This will went to keep the greater part of a large property from the use of the natural heirs and next-of-kin for a length of time, and to let it accumulate at compound interest in such a way and so long, that it would at last mount up in value to the purchase-money of a whole county. The interest accruing from the funded property or the rent of the lands at certain periods was to be employed to purchase other estates, other
