he Pleasures
of Tombs,--a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek-
spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and
eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous
melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like
every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite
principles,--from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our
immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A
tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first
presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of
everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of
a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and
stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a
virtuous character.

"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue,
that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting.
From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that
have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of
love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is that
we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of
an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we
are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to
repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason
of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no
need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the
more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They
produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather
than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with
the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the
country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very
lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to
flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that
grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard;
it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with
all the effects of Nature,--with the dawning of the morning, with the
murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of
the nigh