, one of whom is
always in the attitude of writing on a scroll." Death was a nonentity to
the ancient artist. Could he exhibit what represents nothing? Could he
animate into action what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity?
Elegant images of repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to
indicate the state of death. Even the terms which different nations have
bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of horror.
The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing term of
_Coemeterion_, or "the sleeping-place;" the Jews, who had no horrors
of the grave, by _Beth-haim_, or, "the house of the living;" the
Germans, with religious simplicity, "God's-field." The Scriptures had
only noticed that celestial being "the Angel of Death,"--graceful,
solemn, and sacred!

Whence, then, originated that stalking skeleton, suggesting so many
false and sepulchral ideas, and which for us has so long served as the
image of death?

When the Christian religion spread over Europe, the world changed! the
certainty of a future state of existence, by the artifices of wicked
worldly men, terrified instead of consoling human nature; and in the
resurrection the ignorant multitude seemed rather to have dreaded
retribution, than to have hoped for remuneration. The Founder of
Christianity everywhere breathes the blessedness of social feelings. It
is "Our Father!" whom he addresses. The horrors with which Christianity
was afterwards disguised arose in the corruptions of Christianity among
those insane ascetics who, misinterpreting "the Word of Life," trampled
on nature; and imagined that to secure an existence in the other world
it was necessary not to exist in the one in which God had placed them.
The dominion of mankind fell into the usurping hands of those imperious
monks whose artifices trafficed with the terrors of ignorant and
hypochondriac "Kaisers and kings." The scene was darkened by penances
and by pilgrimages, by midnight vigils, by miraculous shrines, and
bloody flagellations; spectres started up amidst their _tenebres_;
millions of masses increased their supernatural influence. Amidst this
general gloom of Europe, their troubled imaginations were frequently
predicting the end of the world. It was at this period that they first
beheld the grave yawn, and Death, in the Gothic form of a gaunt anatomy,
parading through the universe! The people were frightened as they
viewed, everywhere hung before their eyes, in the t