t."

Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It
is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"--a tract of some forty
or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and
covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is
conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is
marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family
lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills,
its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a
solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits
the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the
great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted
foliage of the autumnal forest.

Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston
Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing
there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing
along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,--the
young, the beautiful, the gay,--busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle
years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs,
hurrying on, on,--car after car,--like the generations of man sweeping
over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.

It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite
resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among
these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light
upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in
these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the
gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad,
--a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the
language of Wordsworth,--

"In youth we love the darkling lawn,
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then evening is preferred to dawn,
And autumn to the spring.
Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."

The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated
their grave-grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers, as places of popular
resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through
which the