All mourned the danger that now threatened him.

He appeared to have had the prospect of long life, and of going down to his grave full of years and of honour.
Perhaps these appearances were deceitful.

Perhaps the intellectual efforts he had made, which were occasionally more sudden, violent, and unintermitted, than a strict regard to health would have dictated, had laid the seed of future disease.

But a sanguine observer would infallibly have predicted, that his temperate habits, activity of mind, and unabated cheerfulness, would be able even to keep death at bay for a time, and baffle the attacks of distemper, provided their approach were not uncommonly rapid and violent.

The general affliction, therefore, was doubly pungent upon the present occasion.
But no one was so much affected as Mr.Falkland.Perhaps no man so well understood the value of the life that was now at stake.