the deceased; that his gifts and graces were
remembered in the simplicity in which they ought to be remembered. The
composition and quality of the mind of a virtuous man, contemplated by
the side of the grave where his body is mouldering, ought to appear, and
be felt as something midway between what he was on earth walking about
with his living frailties, and what he may be presumed to be as a spirit
in heaven.

It suffices, therefore, that the trunk and the main branches of the
worth of the deceased be boldly and unaffectedly represented. Any
further detail, minutely and scrupulously pursued, especially if this be
done with laborious and antithetic discriminations, must inevitably
frustrate its own purpose; forcing the passing Spectator to this
conclusion,--either that the dead did not possess the merits ascribed to
him, or that they who have raised a monument to his memory, and must
therefore be supposed to have been closely connected with him, were
incapable of perceiving those merits; or at least during the act of
composition had lost sight of them; for, the understanding having been
so busy in its petty occupation, how could the heart of the mourner be
other than cold? and in either of these cases, whether the fault be on
the part of the buried person or the survivors, the memorial is
unaffecting and profitless.

Much better is it to fall short in discrimination than to pursue it too
far, or to labour it unfeelingly. For in no place are we so much
disposed to dwell upon those points, of nature and condition, wherein
all men resemble each other, as in the temple where the universal Father
is worshipped, or by the side of the grave which gathers all human
Beings to itself, and 'equalises the lofty and the low.' We suffer and
we weep with the same heart; we love and are anxious for one another in
one spirit; our hopes look to the same quarter; and the virtues by which
we are all to be furthered and supported, as patience, meekness,
good-will, justice, temperance, and temperate desires, are in an equal
degree the concern of us all. Let an Epitaph, then, contain at least
these acknowledgments to our common nature; nor let the sense of their
importance be sacrificed to a balance of opposite qualities or minute
distinctions in individual character; which if they do not, (as will for
the most part be the case,) when examined, resolve themselves into a
trick of words, will, even when they are true and just, for the most
p