ic moralist to die.

When a Stranger has walked round a Country Church-yard and glanced his
eye over so many brief chronicles, as the tomb-stones usually contain,
of faithful wives, tender husbands, dutiful children, and good men of
all classes; he will be tempted to exclaim in the language of one of the
characters of a modern Tale, in a similar situation, 'Where are all the
_bad_ people buried?' He may smile to himself an answer to this
question, and may regret that it has intruded upon him so soon. For my
own part such has been my lot; and indeed a man, who is in the habit of
suffering his mind to be carried passively towards truth as well as of
going with conscious effort in search of it, may be forgiven, if he has
sometimes insensibly yielded to the delusion of those flattering
recitals, and found a pleasure in believing that the prospect of real
life had been as fair as it was in that picture represented. And such a
transitory oversight will without difficulty be forgiven by those who
have observed a trivial fact in daily life, namely, how apt, in a series
of calm weather, we are to forget that rain and storms have been, and
will return to interrupt any scheme of business or pleasure which our
minds are occupied in arranging. Amid the quiet of a church-yard thus
decorated as it seemed by the hand of Memory, and shining, if I may so
say, in the light of love, I have been affected by sensations akin to
those which have risen in my mind while I have been standing by the
side of a smooth sea, on a Summer's day. It is such a happiness to have,
in an unkind world, one enclosure where the voice of Detraction is not
heard; where the traces of evil inclinations are unknown; where
contentment prevails, and there is no jarring tone in the peaceful
concert of amity and gratitude. I have been rouzed from this reverie by
a consciousness suddenly flashing upon me, of the anxieties, the
perturbations, and in many instances, the vices and rancorous
dispositions, by which the hearts of those who lie under so smooth a
surface and so fair an outside have been agitated. The image of an
unruffled sea has still remained; but my fancy has penetrated into the
depths of that sea,--with accompanying thoughts of shipwreck, of the
destruction of the mariner's hopes, the bones of drowned men heaped
together, monsters of the deep, and all the hideous and confused sights
which Clarence saw in his dream.

Nevertheless, I have been able to return