editations,
in order to return the scrape, or doffed bonnet, of such stragglers among
my pupils as fish for trouts or minnows in the little brook, or seek
rushes and wild-flowers by its margin. But, beyond the space I have
mentioned, the juvenile anglers do not, after sunset, voluntarily extend
their excursions. The cause is, that farther up the narrow valley, and in
a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep heathy bank,
there is a deserted burial-ground, which the little cowards are fearful
of approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the place has an
inexpressible charm. It has been long the favourite termination of my
walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and probably
at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal
pilgrimage. [Note: Note, by Mr Jedediah Cleishbotham.--That I kept my
plight in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented friend,
appeareth from a handsome headstone, erected at my proper charges in this
spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter Pattieson, with the date of
his nativity and sepulture; together also with a testimony of his merits,
attested by myself, as his superior and patron.--J. C.]

"It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feeling attached to a
burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description.
Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise
above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The
monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in
the ground, and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the
sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and
no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection,
that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of
mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and
the harebell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the
dew of heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or
disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are
before us; but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our
distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who
sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection, that they
have once been what we now are, and that, as their relics are now
identified with their mother earth, ours shall,