and turmoil of towns, lying in a
fair space amid a small company, where there is a wide prospect of
tilled lands, and the reapers cut the swathes against the very
churchyard wall. And this is my most usual aspiration; yet there are
times when I would not shrink in thought from the Valley of Ezekiel, and
would be content to be written a mere number in some city of the dead,
where at last after all the loneliness of life I should no longer be
kept apart, but be gathered to my fellows where they lie in their
thousands, and be received a member of their society. And though I well
know that it matters not a cummin-seed whether my bones are washed to
and fro on the bed of the sea or my ashes cast to the winds of heaven,
yet I humour this fancy, and find a quiet pleasure in the thought that
death at least may end this isolation.

And what if the propinquity of these poor remains be gage and promise of
a sympathy of souls unveiled and unhidden by false semblances of the
body? Then should death indeed be the crown of a long desire and give me
at the last the fellowship into which life denied initiation. Surely, as
Coleridge dreamed, there is a sex in souls, which, disengaged from the
coarse companionship of the flesh, shall see into each other's crystal
deeps. Thence, in new life, when the last recondite secret is withholden
no longer, there shall come forth those qualities and powers that
ennobled man and woman in mortality; they shall come forth in all their
several strength and beauty, divinely animate, and reflecting upon each
other bright rays and soft colours invisible upon these misty oceans of
our navigation.

It is not terrible to think, at times, on death, for that _danse
macabre_ which troubled the fancy of our forefathers is now danced out,
and the silent figure that knocks at every door comes not as a grinning
skeleton but as one of more gentle countenance than any art can express.
The natural change, which to William Blake was but the passing out of
one room into another, is well personified in the merciful figure with
the kind eyes, coming at the sounded hour to lead away into quietness.
My solitude has taught me to know well those noble efforts which art has
made to lift from our bowed backs the burden of the fear of death: I
like to look upon that youthful Thanatos carved upon a column from the
temple of the Ephesian Diana, and every year the red leaves of autumn
persuade my steps to that village rich in elms w