s burial-ground, and uttering a wish, that in
past times the practice had been adopted of interring the Inhabitants
of large Towns in the Country.--

Then in some rural, calm, sequestered spot,
Where healing Nature her benignant look
Ne'er changes, save at that lorn season, when,
With tresses drooping o'er her sable stole,
She yearly mourns the mortal doom of man,
Her noblest work (so Israel's virgins erst,
With annual moan upon the mountains wept
Their fairest gone), there in that rural scene,
So placid, so congenial to the wish
The Christian feels, of peaceful rest within
The silent grave, I would have strayed:

* * * * *

--wandered forth, where the cold dew of heaven
Lay on the humbler graves around, what time
The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds,
Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse,
'Twere brooding on the Dead inhumed beneath.
There while with him, the holy man of Uz,
O'er human destiny I sympathized,
Counting the long, long periods prophecy
Decrees to roll, ere the great day arrives
Of resurrection, oft the blue-eyed Spring
Had met me with her blossoms, as the Dove,
Of old, returned with olive leaf, to cheer
The Patriarch mourning over a world destroyed:
And I would bless her visit; for to me
'Tis sweet to trace the consonance that links
As one, the works of Nature and the word
Of God.--

JOHN EDWARDS.

A Village Church-yard, lying as it does in the lap of Nature, may
indeed be most favourably contrasted with that of a Town of crowded
Population; and Sepulture therein combines many of the best tendencies
which belong to the mode practised by the Ancients, with others
peculiar to itself. The sensations of pious cheerfulness, which attend
the celebration of the Sabbath-day in rural places, are profitably
chastised by the sight of the Graves of Kindred and Friends, gathered
together in that general Home towards which the thoughtful yet happy
Spectators themselves are journeying. Hence a Parish Church, in the
stillness of the Country, is a visible centre of a community of the
living and the dead; a point to which are habitually referred the
nearest concerns of both.

As, then, both in Cities and in Villages, the Dead are deposited in
close connection with our places of worship, with us the composition
of an Epitaph naturally turns, still more