In the vicinity of London there are several cemeteries kept in decent order, and far different from the ruinous-looking repulsive enclosures within the precincts of its labyrinth of buildings in which "black melancholy dwells;" the melancholy of horror, and not of chastened and saddened recollection; but even these shew that the dead are indeed soon forgotten. No hands are observed in them suspending garlands on the tombstones, or plucking obtrusive weeds from the graves. They remain unstrewed with symbols of affection, and no "rosemary" is offered "for remembrance" there. The sod is pressed, indeed, by the footstep of the passenger whose path to business or pleasure lies over it, but visits of regard to the tombs of the departed, very common in some parts of England, are unknown. There is such a change of men and things constantly passing before the eyes of the living; there is so much care and such a number of those collisions which blunt the more exquisite sensibilities of our natures always harrassing us, that the early indifference manifested towards the dead in the memory of survivors, is easily accounted for. The flowery feelings of life are fading away fast before the withering influences of money-getting and corruption. In the country the loss of a friend inflicts a wound which it will take years to heal; in town, friends are easily replaced, because town friendships do not make part of ourselves the things of the heart, which those in the country in some measure do. The sight of the churchtower, beneath which a beloved relative or friend reposes there, brings before us a regretful remembrance of him; but in London we have no passing mementos of the dead, for the living absorb all our faculties, and the soil that sounds hollow on the coffin too often buries the memory of town friendships with the body it covers. It may seem harsh thus to accuse a civilized people of neglecting the dead, when their memory is preserved in some countries with a religious veneration, and when even unenlightened nations exhibit an affectionate regard for them. The morais of the South Sea Islanders, and the observations lately made by our countrymen among the amiable people of the Loo Choo Islands, prove this. The American savage never forgets the tomb of his fathers. In his trackless woods he scoops out the pit in which he inters the body; and though drawn by war or hunting hundreds of miles distant, though years may have elapsed and age paralyzed his limbs, he can even then direct the inquirer to the spot again, and can recal with filial respect the number of moons which have passed away since he committed the parental reliques to the earth; he remembers too the exact height of the sun that marked observed to be very fatal during the hot months of summer. In 1780, the soil had arisen eight feet above the height of the neighbouring streets. Vaults stuffed full with corrupting bodies; pits, in which the dead were piled in layers on each other; and fresh graves daily opening in the midst of putrefaction, easily explained the causes of the disorders which raged in their vicinity; and the council of state, in spite of the resistance made to it for a long time by the church, issued an order in 1786 to abate the nuisance. The remains of human beings, equal in number to the population of the city, were removed to the stone quarries situated under Paris, and the site of the cemetery was changed into a market. Masses of human flesh were found converted into spermaceti, from the want of the necessary air to complete the process of decay. Four large cemeteries, one of them 80 acres, were allotted at a distance from the city, where the air cannot stagnate, to inter the dead. * For an account of one of these, see Vol. iv. p. 155, New Monthly Magazine. the hour of interment. The Parguinotes, so basely sacrificed to their enemies the Turks, with a fine romantic feeling of regard for the bones of their fathers, collected them in heaps in their market-place, and burned them, that they might not be thought to have abandoned them to the detestable barbarians, who were licensed to rob them of their native soil. This was an act worthy of Grecian hearts when Greece was in her glory. Thus a respect for the dead is a natural feeling born with us, and matured with our being. The regard of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans for their dead, and the stupendous, but vain evidences time has spared of their respect for them, are known to all conversant with antiquities. But of modern burying-places the Turkish are those which most impress the mind with the solemnity of the last change. Black cypresses form a grove around every tomb, which is never disturbed, and consequently the cemetery increases in size, with every fresh interment, until it covers a whole horizon. Grave upon grave, with the plantations thus multiplied, present a sad and gloomy appearance; the tops of the cypresses undulate in the wind for leagues, like waves on a dark ocean of death. White marble here and there contrasts with the deep dense shades of the sombre foliage, and the whole scene is stamped with a most impressive and melancholy grandeur. In the south of Spain the cemeteries afford a direct contrast of character to those of Turkey. "During the time I sojourned in Spain," says L. M. de Langle, "I found in various towns and villages the most charming burying-grounds, in regard to the situation and rural aspect they presented. On the road from Granada to Cadiz, in a little town of Antiquera, one struck me beyond all the rest; and though I only saw it once passing, I have its exact picture imprinted on my memory. It was in the centre of the town, and the church was situated near the middle of it. It stood on high ground, was a perfect square, and commanded a clear view all round: a streamlet ran sparkling through the centre, the soil was covered with jessamines, violets, roses, and numberless other flowers, that sprung up spontaneously without culture. There were no cypresses, sycamores, or other tress of sorrow, with their bastard-green colour, nurturing melancholy beneath their boughs, and seeming devoted to the service of death; but there were plenty of lote-trees and apple-trees, on which a thousand birds were singing and making love among the branches." In the uncultivated and wild parts of America, the grave of a settler or backwoodsman is excavated in the midst of a boundless forest, beneath trees that have flourished for unknown ages, and in a spot, perhaps, never before visited by a human intruder. The grave is dug deep to prevent wild beasts from disinterring the body. There it is inhumed "unhouselled" without dirge or prayer, and, being covered with earth, is resigned for ever amid the solemnity of those mighty solitudes to its unbroken repose. The cemetery of Napoleon is a singular instance of adaptation to the character of the individual buried-a vast rock rising out of the occan, alone, towering, unshaken and magnificent; a perfect emblem of the genius of the man, as it must appear in future history. When the feminine apprehension of, or hatred to his ashes, that fortunately consigned them to such an appropriate grave, instead of bringing them to Europe, has subsided, and his virtues and vices are duly weighed unwarped by modern prejudices, his name connected with his gigantic exploits will still more resemble the rock of St. Helena rising "majestic 'mid the solitude of time." How beautiful are many of our country church-yards, filled with humble graves and covered with wild flowers. This is the case particularly in Wales. Some country burying-grounds have a character of seclusion and peace that almost reconcile us to the resignation of life. We almost wish to be located in them-to "steal from the world" into them. The mind of man must surely be in a state of aberration when it is busying itself among the tumults of active life, and toiling amid boisterous crowds in dissatisfaction; or else it would not contemplate tranquility with such pleasure, even the tranquility of the grave! The burying-places in and around London offer little to the eye in the shape of monuments that is worth seeing; a heavy sameness reigns every where, and the inscriptions, which in sentiment or correctness do not always harmonise with the rank of the deceased in life, are stupid, fulsome, and hackneyed. Indeed for the most part they are penned in the very mediocrity of dulness. An epitaph must be either very bad or very good to be tolerated; and it is to these two extremes that the epitaph collector confines himself. A church-yard is a species of album, in which are recorded the effusions of the educated and uneducated, of stiff heraldic scholarship, and of simple affectionate sorrow. If the latter tell a lie on a tomb, still there is an amiable excuse for so doing, which the former is without; thus, if a child erect a tombstone over its parent, or a widow over her husband, if they say the deceased was the most perfect of beings, we can excuse it, for they, no doubt, thought him so. The heraldic or scholastic liar in epitaphs is a different character, he sins in open day; and when he tells us with a flourish that Sam. Scrip lies below, who was a most charitable and humane man, and yet never gave a farthing in his life to the poor that the law did not force him to give, and performed not a single good action, nay, actually died of grief, though worth half a million, because he lost ten thousand on a mortgage, we are disgusted at such a perversion of truth. Inscriptions over the dead are of great antiquity, but have no rules to restrain or modify them. Those most admired have been terse and short, as that over Tasso, "Ossa Torquati Tasso"-" The bones of Torquato Tasso." There is great beauty in this, it is in the cemetry of Pere Lachaise, and is inscribed on a broken column: "Ma Mere." This from Malherbe, on the tomb of a young lady, is sweetly applied : Et elle a véçu, ce que vivent les roses The following is asserted by Boileau to be the best epigrammatic epitaph ever written : Cy gist ma femme-ah! qu'elle est bien Pour son repos, et pour le mien ! A village chorister of Hanover, after the death of a beautiful girl whom he loved, carved rudely on her tombstone a rose, and beneath it the words C'est ainsi qu'elle fut! One of our best epitaph writers was Ben Jonson. Pope's are artificial and unnatural, with few exceptions. Jonson's to the memory of the Countess of Pembroke is well known, and that on Elizabeth L- H— is nearly equal to it in merit; that to Sir J. Roe is very pleasing. I'll not offend thee with a vain tear more, My first ramble was into the church-yard of Paddington, the excellent state of which reflects great credit on the parish. The scenery is pretty, but the buildings of this limitless city are making rapid advances towards it. The Green on one side, with its huge old elms, recals ancient times, when the neighbourhood of the dead was that of sport and merriment during holidays Shady trees grow in the church-yard over the tombs, and the nettles and ruder weeds are cleared away. The number of tombstones is great, but there is scarcely a striking inscription or noted name recorded among them. On a humble stone, erected by Lord Petre to the memory of Dr. Geddes, who died in 1802, aged 65, is the following liberal extract from his works: -"Christian is my name and Catholic my surname; I grant that you are a Christian as well as I, and embrace you as my fellow disciple in Jesus, and if you were not a disciple of Jesus, still I would embrace you as my fellow man." The following wretched doggrel appears upon a stone erected to one J. Russel: The grave is a sweet bed of roses There is something touching in the simplicity of the following:"Farewell, Eliza! The recollection of thy many and rare virtues will be long and tenderly cherished in the affectionate regrets of thy afflicted father, sister, and brother!" There are some mortuary inscriptions that appear more than once in every church-yard, such as those beginning "Afflictions sore long time I bore ;" and "The world is a city full of crooked streets," &c. well known to be from the “unlettered muse." In these cases, it is probable, the verse of poetry essential on a tomb-stone in the opinion of the poor man, is left to be selected by the stone-cutter, whose acquaintance with the muse extends no farther than to two or three well-known ditties, and these he uses indiscriminately, and generally misspells. There is about some inscriptions, too, an endeavour to render death palatable to survivors, by recording the advantages of it, in order to make the best of an evil (if it be an evil) which cannot be avoided. In this burying-ground there is a monument to the memory of Eleanor Boucher, daughter of J. Addison, Esq. of Oxon Hill, Maryland, America, who appears to have been a relative of the noted Addison. It concludes thus:-" After a long series of ill health, supported with a resignation truly Christian, on the 1st of March 1784, at the age of 44, she closed her valuable life, having, like her relation the celebrated Mr. Addison, been oppressed by a shortness of breath, which was aggravated by a dropsy. Like Addison, also, she shewed in the man ner of her death, in what peace a Christian can die." Addison's daughter, by the Countess of Warwick, died at Bilton in Warwickshire in 1797, very old and weak in her intellects; but what other branches of his family, if any, yet remain, either in England or America, is not generally known. The following is almost the only tolerable epitaph of the more lengthy kind in the burying-ground. On THOMAS WALKER, born 1777, died 1818. Bounds the warm tide of youth along thy veins?— The strength of manhood flourish'd in the frame O ponder this in lowliness of soul, -farewell! V. SONG, BY T. CAMPBELL. EARL March look'd on his dying child, She's at the window many an hour And her love look'd up to Ellen's bower, But ah! so pale, he knew her not, Though her smile on him was dwelling. And am I then forgot-forgot?— It broke the heart of Ellen. In vain he weeps, in vain he sighs, Nor love's own kiss shall wake those eyes |