Des Arc citizen., 1866-11-24
Deaths of Remarkable Characters.

Deaths of Remarkable Characters.
 There have been many remarkable deaths in this world of ours. John Hunter, the eminent English physician. on leaving home one morning, as usual, remarked to his wife that if a discus sion which awaited him at the hospital took an angry turn, it would prove his death What he apprehended oc- cured; a colleague gave him the lie, and he expired almost immediately in an adjoining room. Some have classed this with cases like those of enthusiasts and fanatics like Swedcrborg and oth
 CTS who pretended to predict their own death through supernatural agency j; but Hunter had explained such predic- tions himself long before he died, when he said to one of his colleagues: We sometimes feel within that we shall not live, for the living powers become weak, and the nerves communicate the. intelligence to the brain." He was aware that he had long been laboring under disease of the heart, and his knowedge of physiology was sufficient to inform him that whatever would violently agitate that organ at this stage of the malady would end his life
 Who would expect that a Duke of Brittany should be pressed to death i'll a crowd, as that duke was at the entry of Pope Clement into Lyons? Has not one king been killed at a tilting? and did not one of his ancestors die by the jostle of hog? Nschylus, being threatened with the fall of a house, got nothing by going into the fields to avoid that danger, for there he was knocked on the head by a tortoise fall ing out of an eagles talons. Another was choked with a grape-stone. An emperor was killed with the scratch of comb in combing his own head, and .Emilius Lupidus. with stumble at his own threshold. Aufidius, with iostle against the door as he entered the council il-chamber; and, in the very en- brace of women, Cornelius Gallus, the pretor; Tigillinus, captain ofthe watch at Rome; LudOvico, son of Guido de Gonzago, marquis of Mantua; and still worse example, Speusippus, a Pla-. tonic philosopher, (Tertullian mentions this in his Apologetics); and one of the popes. The poor Judge Bibius, in the eight days reprieve he gave criminal, was himself caught hold of, his own re-
 prieve of life having expired. And Caius Julius, the physician, while an nointing the eyes of a patient, had death close his own. A brother of Montaigne, the French writer, Captain St. Martin, a young man of three and twenty years old, who had already given sufficient testimony of his valor, playing a match at tennis, received blow of a ball little above his right 1 ear, which though it was without any manner or sign of wound, or depression of the skull, and though he took no great notice of it, nor so much as sat down to repose himself, he neverthe 1 less died within five or six hours after of an apoplexy occasioned by that blow. n l Captain Basil Hall, in his account of the battle of Corunna, at which he was present, relates that an old officer, who
 was shot in the head, arrived, pale and faint, at the temporary hospital, and begged the surgeon to look at his wound, which was pronounced mortal.
 'Indeed, 1 feared so" he said, with inn peded utterance, "and yet 1 should like very much to live little longer, if it were possible.o He laid his sword upon a stone at his side, as gently says Hall, 'as if its steel had been turned
 into glass, and immediately sunk dead 1 upon the turf" A storm arose on the day Admiral Collingwood died. The captain expressed a fear that he was disturbed by the tossing. No, Thom- as," he replied, "I am now in state ;n
 which nothing ill this world can disturb me more. l am dying, and l am sure it must be consolatory to you and to all
 who love me, to see how comfortably | am coming to my end"
 Montaigne, when stunned by fall
 from his horse, tore open his doublet; :;
 but he was entirely senselcss,i and would have known nothing about what
 he had done had he not been reformed
 of it by his attendants. His only pain,
 he said, was that which he felt ill re- covering. A foot soldier at Waterloo,
 pierced by ball in the hip, begged
 water from-a trooper who happened to have canteen of beer. The wounded man drank freely, returned his hearty thanks, and mentioned that his regi- ment was nearly exterminated; but,
 having proceeded dozen yards on his
 way to the rear, fell heavily, and with one convulsive movement of his limbs, ! expired. '.Yet his voice." says the
 trooper, "gave scarcely the least sign of i weakness or pain.' .44t1
 It is well known that the unfortunate X Ouecu of Scots had been longing for