Pause, Traveller!" so
often found upon the Monuments. And to its Epitaph also must have been
supplied strong appeals to visible appearances or immediate
impressions, lively and affecting analogies of Life as a
Journey--Death as a Sleep overcoming the tired Wayfarer--of Misfortune
as a Storm that falls suddenly upon him--of Beauty as a Flower that
passeth away, or of innocent pleasure as one that may be gathered--of
Virtue that standeth firm as a Rock against the beating Waves;--of
Hope "undermined insensibly like the Poplar by the side of the River
that has fed it," or blasted in a moment like a Pine-tree by the
stroke of lightning upon the Mountain-top--of admonitions and
heart-stirring remembrances, like a refreshing Breeze that comes
without warning, or the taste of the waters of an unexpected Fountain.
These, and similar suggestions, must have given, formerly, to the
language of the senseless stone a voice enforced and endeared by the
benignity of that Nature with which it was in unison.--We, in modern
times, have lost much of these advantages; and they are but in a small
degree counterbalanced to the Inhabitants of large Towns and Cities,
by the custom of depositing the Dead within, or contiguous to, their
places of worship; however splendid or imposing may be the appearance
of those Edifices, or however interesting or salutary the
recollections associated with them. Even were it not true that Tombs
lose their monitory virtue when thus obtruded upon the Notice of Men
occupied with the cares of the World, and too often sullied and
defiled by those cares, yet still, when Death is in our thoughts,
nothing can make amends for the want of the soothing influences of
Nature, and for the absence of those types of renovation and decay,
which the fields and woods offer to the notice of the serious and
contemplative mind. To feel the force of this sentiment, let a man
only compare in imagination the unsightly manner in which our
Monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost
grassless Church-yard of a large Town, with the still seclusion of a
Turkish Cemetery, in some remote place; and yet further sanctified by
the Grove of Cypress in which it is embosomed. Thoughts in the same
temper as these have already been expressed with true sensibility by
an ingenious Poet of the present day. The subject of his Poem is "All
Saints Church, Derby": he has been deploring the forbidding and
unseemly appearance of it