dead authorize them to do so? Did our warriors bleed, our statesmen rule, our poets write, and all our great spirits distinguish themselves, to be locked up, that we might pay to peep at them?

The illustrious dead are our own; they belong to the nation; before the time of Alfred they formed that nucleus which has grown up, and gathered, and spread, and become at last mighty England. Our glory is not to be found in riches and antiquities alone; its immortal part is lettered in the names of our dead, which Fame has trumpeted to the utmost ends of the earth. And now these great Great Freemen of England, which no earthly power could bind whilst living, are kept from us unjustly. Their jailers have turned our glory into grief, and mingled feelings of reproach with the hallowed thoughts that ought only to hover around the honoured dead. They recall to our mind the old couplet

"That was the mighty Cæsar-here you see

All that makes-Sir-you have not paid the fee."

Better a thousand times would it be, if the departed great slept in some open cemetery, where we might have access to their graves, rather than be kept in this selfish seclusion; for their ashes would hallow the remotest solitude, and their dust consecrate the commonest corner of the universe their memories are imperishable.

Many a monumental effigy still exists, which has outlived the name it was sculptured to commemorate. Our knowledge just enables us to distinguish whether it was a warrior or a priest; as for the rest, time hath shuffled it into the dust of a million forgotten ambitions, which his unsparing breath has blown into oblivion. We have not so many renowned men that their tombs need to be hidden.

"Who knows," says a celebrated writer,(9) "whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time?" What grand visions spring out of this hope to be realized in a future state of existence? What a narrow escape had "Abbot Samson" from oblivion, and who knows but that many a chronicle may be laid up in dark corners as instructive as "Joselyn of Brokland's ?" We know not what records are kept in the archives of heaven, or what mighty memories are registered in the Book of Life. Names we never heard may have been uttered with loud acclaim, and all heaven rung with rejoicings as their entry was announced. To know such as these, may be one of those lasting delights reserved for our future happiness—“to draw near the nature of the Gods." Let us have access to the tombs of those whom we know to be great, good, and worthy, that we may have a foretaste of this pleasure.

Returning to our subject of rural cemeteries, we marvel to find so little that is new in monumental decorations, old Heathen symbols meet the eye in almost every direction. In the catacombs, the Egyptian style of sepulchral architecture may be considered in keeping, as it fills the imagination with solemn associations, and recalls those ancient and "silent cities of the dead;" carrying the mind back to the captivity of Israel, to the wondrous achievements of Moses, and all those stirring incidents, which once shook the oldest kingdom of the world. Surely the path which Christianity has hewn through a thousand dangers, and which, though so full of peril, her martyrs fearlessly trod on their way to

(9) Sir Thomas Browne's Urn-Burial,

Eternal Life, is not so barren but that it might furnish something better than those emblems of the old idolaters. How few, saving the learned, understand the meaning of those mysterious hieroglyphics; even the tear vessels, quenched torches, winged hour glasses, and circled serpents, are beyond the comprehension of thousands. They would better understand the descending dove, the fullcheeked angel sounding the last trumpet, the sacred cross, the arched rainbow, the ark, the stone rolled from the mouth of the sepulchre, and a hundred other old and holy emblems, which abound in our ancient churchyards. There seems to be a want of invention amongst our modern sculptors, not so much in the mere outline of monuments (their forms are numerous enough), but a want of something that would at once speak to the imagination. It is yet left for some man of mind to illustrate death, from the history of our holy religion; to sculpture that sleep after life's long storm, and call from the marble such forms as we believe we shall meet with in Heaven. The increase of rural cemeteries may yet be instrumental in bringing forth some hidden genius into light.

To such as us, who love flowers, and have some of every hue, culled from the choice gardens of the old poets, and preserved in the store-house of our memory, a grave overgrown with flowers is like a written book. We see but little to sorrow over in an infant's grave, planted round with snowdrops, peeping through the "saintly veil of maiden white," and blowing in the very lap of Winter. To our eye

that cold chaste flower calls up only images of hope and innocence; a pure emblem of the little sleeper below. Not a jarring note comes across the undisturbed harmony of our thoughts; there is not a youthful folly to mourn over, nor a

single action to regret. If we sigh it is for the fond mother left behind; for the face, a shade paler, since those little eyes, now closed below, looked into her own, and felt their unuttered love. We almost feel its little hand, grasping one single finger, and in fancy behold the fond mother kiss the arched crimson of its flower-sweet lips;-yes, we are sorry for her who no doubt in her sleep, feels for it many a time in the darkness, and awakes to find a cold blank spot, where its warm velvet cheek was wont to be imbedded, while weeping she exclaims with Milton,

"Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead,

Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark womb,
Or that thy beauties lie in wormie bed

Hid from the world in a low delved tomb

Could heaven for pity thee so strictly doom?

Oh no! for something in thy face did shine,
Above mortality-that showed thou wert divine."

Snowdrops and daisies are pretty companions to plant upon such an innocent grave.

The weeping-willow, bearing sorrow in its very name, is a fit emblem to droop over the grave of a fond mother, who has left her children in a strange land. It recalls the captivity of Israel; the silent harps, which before sounded with music, seem suspended from its downcast branches; and we wish the "songs of Zion" to remain for a time unsung. It also recalls the image of Barbara, of whom Desdemona discourseth so eloquently, who went about the house 66 hanging her head aside, and died for love."

In one place we were drawn by a rich perfume, to a remote grave, one that lay far back, as if to avoid the common gaze, and we found a monument erected to the memory

of a young wife, like the marchioness immortalized by Milton,

"Summers three times eight save one

She had told, alas, too soon,

And in her garland as she stood,
You might discern a cypress bud;
For the full blossom hung its head
Sideways, as on a dying bed."

Her quiet resting place was overgrown with sweet-briar. It was a happy thought so to plant her grave, it told us that she was the sweetener of life, that she made her home a Paradise. Only twenty-three-Oh death! and her little infant too-her first child: the rose and the bud both shaken into the grave together; even their names were not recorded. We removed a branch of the sweetbriar and read lower down, "Also, the husband, and father, who died!" Oh God! within twelve months, after he had wept over his wife and child; and we inwardly exclaimed, "Death after all is merciful;" like Corporal Trim, "we thanked God, that he was dead."

The Primrose is one of our favourite flowers, it is an old emblem of childhood, or youth; Shakspere calls it the flower, "that's like thy face;" and Milton says, that "when forsaken it dies;" it tells us that spring is come, and settles down like a pale sunshine upon the dark Winter of the grave. From childhood it has in our mind, become a golden-link in the chain of Resurrection; the woods and banks around our native home were overgrown with this beautiful flower, and the first blowing root we dug up, had for years made us happy. We cannot even now account for these ideas. It might be that they came full of promise, that they told us summer would again add flower to flower;