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presence of some kindred spirit,-it is to these that the reposi tories of the dead bring home thoughts full of admonition, of instruction, and slowly, but surely, of consolation also. They admonish us, by their very silence, of our own frail, transitory being They instruct us in the true value of life, and in its noble purposes, its duties, and its de:ination. They spread around us, in the reminiscences of the past, sources of pleasing, though melancholy reflection.

4. I have spoken but of feelings and associations common to all ages, and all generations of men-to the rude and the polished-to the barbarian and the civilized-to the bond and the free-to the inhabitant of the dreary forests of the north, and the sultry regions of the south-to the worshiper of the sun, and the worshiper of idols-to the heathen, dwelling in the darkness of his cold mythology, and to the Christian, rejoicing in the light of the true God. Everywhere we trace them, in the characteristic remains of the most distant ages and nations, and as far back as human history carries its traditionary outFes. They are found in the barrows, and cairns, and mounds of olden times, reared by the uninstructed affection of savage tribes; and everywhere the spots seem to have been selected with the same tender regard to the living and the dead; that the magnificence of nature might administer comfort to human sorrow, and incite human sympathy.

5. If this tender regard for the dead be so absolutely universal, and so deeply founded in human affection, why is it not made to exert a more profound influence on our lives? Why do we not enlist it with more persuasive energy in the cause of human improvement? Why do we not enlarge it as a source of religious consolation? Why do we not make it a more efficient instrument to elevate ambition, to stimulate genius, and to dignify learning? Why do we not connect it indissolubly with associations, which charm us in nature, and engross us in art? Why do we not dispel from it that unlovely gloom, from which our hearts turn, as from a darkness that ensnares, and a horror that appalls our thoughts?

6 To many, nay, to most of the heathen, the burying-place

was the end of all things. They indulged no hope, at least, no solid hope, of any future intercourse or reunion with their friends. The farewell at the grave was a long, and an everlasting farewell. At the moment, when they breathed it, it brought to their hearts a startling sense of their own wretchedness. Yet, when the first tumults of anguish were passed, they visited the spot, and strewed flowers, and garlands, and crowns around it, to assuage their grief, and nourish their piety. They delighted to make it the abode of the varying beauties of nature; to give it attractions, which should invite the busy and the thoughtful; and yet, at the same time, afford ample scope for the secret indulgence of sorrow.

7. Why should not Christians imitate such examples? They have far nobler motives to cultivate moral sentiments and sen. sibilities; to make cheerful the pathways to the grave; to combine with deep meditations on human mortality the sublime consolations of religion. We know, indeed, as they did of old, that " man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets." But that home is not an everlasting home; and the mourners may not weep, as those who are without hope.

8. What is the grave to us, but a thin barrier, dividing time from eternity, and earth from Heaven? What is it, but "the appointed place of rendezvous, where all the travelers on life' journey meet," for a single night of repose?

"Tis but a night-a long and moonless night,
We make the grave our bed, and then are gcu

Know we not,

"The time draws on

When not a single spot of burial earth,
Whether on land or in the spacious sea,
But must give up its long-committed dust
Inviolate?"

EXERCISE LV.

THE BELL AT GREENWOOD.*

I.

ARTHUR MORRELL.

A mournful office is thine, old Bell,

To ring orth naught but the iust sad knell
Of the coffined worm, as he passeth by,
And thou seem'st to say,-" Ye all must die!”

II.

No joyful peal dost thou ever ring;

But ever and aye, as hither they bring

The dead to sleep 'neath the greenwood tree,
Thy sound is heard, pealing mournfully.

III.

No glad occasion dost thou proclaim;
Thy mournful tone is ever the same—
The slow measured peal, that tells of woe,
Such as hearts that feel it, may only know.

IV.

Hadst thou the power of speech, old Bell,
Methinks strange stories thou'dst often tell;
How some are brought here, with tear and moan,
While others pass by, unmourned, alone;

V.

How strangers are hither brought to sleep,
Whose home, perhaps, was beyond the deep;
Who, seeking our shores, come but to die,
And here, in this hallowed spot, to lie;

* A beautiful cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

VI.

How a wife hath followed a husband's bier,

How a husband hath followed a wife most dear,-
How brother and sister have come in turn,
To shed their tears o'er a parent's urn;

VII.

How father and mother, in accents wild,
Have bewailed the loss of a darling child;
How a friend o'er a friend hath shed the tear,
As he laid him down to slumber here;

VIII.

How the victim of sorrow's ceaseless smart,
Hath given up life with a willing heart,
And thought of this spot with a smiling face,
Glad, at last, to find him a resting-place

IX.

I wonder if thou dost ring, old Bell,
For the rich man, a louder, longer knell,
Than thou dost for the poor who enter here,
Or the humble and unpretending bier;

X.

And dost thou ring forth a peal less sad
For the pure and the good, than for the bad?
Or dost thou toll the same knell for all-

The rich and the poor, the great and the small!

XI.

Oh, a mournful office is thine, old Bell!

To ring forth naught but the last sad knell
Of the coffined worm, as he passeth by,

And thou seem'st to say,- "Thus all must die!"

EXERCISE LVI.

"CHARLES LAMB," says an acute critic, "is one of the most admirable of those humorists who form the peculiar feature of the literature, as the ideas they express, are the peculiar distinction of the character of the English people. He was born in 1775, and died in 1834; and forms a bright light in that intellectual galaxy of which Wordsworth is the center. He was essentially a Londoner: London life supplied him with his richest materials; and yet his mind was so imbued, so saturated with our older writers, that he is original by the mere force of self-transformation into the spirit of the elder literature: he was, in short, an old writer, who lived by accident a century or two after his real time. Wordsworth is peculiarly the poet of solitary rural nature; Lamb drew an inspiration as true, as delicate, as profound, from the city life in which he lived; and from which he never was, for a moment, removed but with pain and a yearning to come back."

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

CHARLES LAMB.

1. Every man hath two birthdays: two days, at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which, in an especial manner, he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnizing our proper birthday, hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

2. Of all sound of all bells-(bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven)-most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected-in that regretted time. 1 begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal color; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed,

"I saw the skirts of the departing Year !"

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