unblane Cathedral,
told me of his acquaintance with the birds that still attended on his
labours; how some would even perch about him, waiting for their prey;
and, in a true Sexton's Calendar, how the species varied with the season
of the year. But this was the very poetry of the profession. The others
whom I knew were somewhat dry. A faint flavour of the gardener hung
about them, but sophisticated and disbloomed. They had engagements to
keep, not alone with the deliberate series of the seasons, but with
mankind's clocks and hour-long measurement of time. And thus there was
no leisure for the relishing pinch, or the hour-long gossip, foot on
spade. They were men wrapped up in their grim business; they liked well
to open long-closed family vaults, blowing in the key and throwing wide
the grating; and they carried in their minds a calendar of names and
dates. It would be "in fifty-twa" that such a tomb was last opened, for
"Miss Jemimy." It was thus they spoke of their past patients--familiarly
but not without respect, like old family servants. Here is indeed a
servant, whom we forget that we possess; who does not wait at the bright
table, or run at the bell's summons, but patiently smokes his pipe
beside the mortuary fire, and in his faithful memory notches the
burials of our race. To suspect Shakespeare in his maturity of a
superficial touch savours of paradox; yet he was surely in error when he
attributed insensibility to the digger of the grave. But perhaps it is
on Hamlet that the charge should lie; or perhaps the English sexton
differs from the Scottish. The "goodman delver," reckoning up his years
of office, might have at least suggested other thoughts. It is a pride
common among sextons. A cabinet-maker does not count his cabinets, nor
even an author his volumes, save when they stare upon him from the
shelves; but the grave-digger numbers his graves. He would indeed be
something different from human if his solitary open-air and tragic
labours left not a broad mark upon his mind. There, in his tranquil
isle, apart from city clamour, among the cats and robins and the ancient
effigies and legends of the tomb, he waits the continual passage of his
contemporaries, falling like minute drops into eternity. As they fall,
he counts them; and this enumeration, which was at first perhaps
appalling to his soul, in the process of years and by the kindly
influence of habit grows to be his pride and pleasure. There are many
commo