ular masses of
masonry; and others were simple sarcophagi with lids, resting on
square elevated pedestals. Most of them were adorned with busts and
statues of the departed, with altars, columns, and carvings. What
these tombs were in their prime, it is difficult for us to picture;
but even their remains at the present day produce the conviction that
no grander mode of approach to a great city could have been devised.

It would seem to us altogether incongruous to line our public roads
with tombs, and to transact the business and pursue the pleasures of
the living among the dead. All our ideas of propriety would be shocked
by seeing a circus for athletic games beside a cemetery. But the
ancient Romans had no such feeling. They buried their dead, not in
lonely spots and obscure churchyards as we do, but where the life of
the city was gayest. One of the grandest of their sepulchral monuments
was placed beside one of the most frequented of their circuses. The
last objects which a Roman beheld when he left the city, and the first
that greeted him on his coming back, were the tombs of his ancestors
and friends; and their silent admonition did not deepen the sadness
of farewell, or cast a shadow upon the joy of return. Many of the
marble sarcophagi were ornamented with beautiful bas-reliefs of
mythical incidents, utterly inconsistent, we should suppose, with the
purpose for which they were designed. Nuptials, bacchanalian fetes,
games, and dances, are crowded upon their sculptured sides, in seeming
mockery of the pitiable relics of humanity within. They treated death
lightly and playfully, these ancient Romans, and tried to hide his
terror with a mask of smiles, and to cover his dart with a wreath of
flowers.

Why is it that we Christians look upon death with feelings so widely
different? Why, when life and immortality have been brought to light
in the gospel, are the mementoes of mortality more painful and
saddening to us than they were to these pagans who had no hopes of a
resurrection? It seems a paradox, but the Christianity which has
brought the greatest hope into the world has also brought the greatest
fear. By increasing the value of life, our religion has increased the
fear of death. By quickening the conscience, it has quickened the
imagination; and that death which to the man conscious only of a
physical existence is the mere natural termination of life, to the
nature convinced of sin is a violent breach of the bea