multitude in death destroys identity,
saving where the little greatness of wealth or rank may provide itself a
separate railing or an overtopping urn. Even in the more suggestive
solitude of the country, one cannot but contrast the few hillocks here
and there carefully weeded, and their trained and tended rose-bushes,
with the many more neglected and sunken, whose distained stones the
brier-tangle half conceals, and whose forget-me-nots have long since
died for want of water. One may even muse unprofitably (despite the
moralist) in our picturesque cemeteries, and as unprofitably in those
abroad, with their crowds of crosses and monotony of immortal wreaths.
In fact, whether on grounds philosophical or religious, it is not good
to brood on mortality for itself alone; better rather to recall the
living past, and in the living present prepare for the perfect future.

None die to be forgotten who deserve to be remembered. Even the fame for
which some are ardent to sacrifice their lives, enjoyed early at that
crisis of existence we call _success_, will in most cases change the
desire for renown into a necessity, and stimulate the mind to the lowest
motive but one, ambition,--possibly, to emulation, the lowest of all.
Fame is valuable simply as the test of excellence; and there is a
certain kind of popularity, sudden alike in its rise and subsidency,
which deserves not the other and lasting name, for it fails to soothe
that intellectual conscience which a great writer has declared to exist
equally with the moral conscience. After all, it is a question whether
fame is as precious to the celebrated during their lifetime as it is to
those who love them, or who are attached to them by interest.

There are persons who die and are forgotten, when their exit from the
stage of human affairs is a source of advantage to their survivors.
Witness those possessed of large fortunes, which they have it in their
power to bequeath, and over whose dwellings of mortality vigilant
relations hover like the carrion-fowl above the dying battle-steed. I
remember a good story to this effect, in which a lady and gentleman took
a grateful vow to pic-nic annually, on the anniversary of his death, at
the tomb of a relation who had greatly enriched them. They did so,
actually, _once_; succeeding years saw them no more at the solemn tryst.

Even as to those who have excelled in art, or portrayed in language the
imaginative side of life, it may be that th