Like the unclouded evening of a summer's day are the declining years of a life well spent. Gradually, imperceptibly, it seems-the golden sunshine gives place to a milder radiand as the twilight creeps over the earth and deepens into night, and the stars shine out of heaven, so gradual is the change, we scarcely can tell when day is gone and night sets in.

ance;

PREFACE.

What can be a more beautiful or solemn scene than a visit to a well-kept Cemetery? How contrasted is their solemn quiet, their tombs, the fresh green turf, the shrubby alleys, the perfume, and the flowers, with the crowded, never resting graves of the old church-yards. It is a scene that, amidst images of touching solemnity, is full of visual pleasure. Monuments are set in every possible direction, relieved with trees, and of a hundred forms, here white slabs and table tombs are shining amidst shrubs and flowers, above which pinnacles, and columns, crosses, urns and figures are seen; and here and there at intervals rise up minarets and spires, with pointed obelisks of grey and red granite polished till it looks like porphyry. Now the light cupola of a marble mosque gleams through a group of dark-green cypress trees; now a gothic cross, ornate with carved work; anon the draped form of a female mourner; and at a little distance a broken shaft with a festoon of flowers spirally enwreathing it. It is this mingling of floral beauty with the imagery of death, that makes these funeral demesnes so pleasant; how stark, and cold, and stony, would all this

statuary appear, but that it has the green sward for its groundwork, and shading trees, and spots all rosy, or mosaiced with flowers, shining amidst and round its monumental marbles. That low white cross with pendant wreaths of yellow amaranths, (offerings of living love to the dust in dust beneath it,) looks still purer for the soft green leaves and clusters of the scarlet geranium, lifting its glowing petals at his feet.

Cemeteries express the feelings, and meet the wants of an altered time. God's acre (to use the old German name) must not be a miserable tenth of an acre, where you sow death and reap pestilence and fees. Burial should be made beautiful and sacred. In various parts of the kingdom large tracts of land fall into the hands of the Burial Boards and are tastefully planted. Chapels are erected, and due consecration performed, that those whose creeds are different, may each have for his remains the form of rite which his fathers professed. Groups of children, knots of decorous wanderers may be seen strolling in the sunshine among grass, and trees and flowers. To such a place the new summer brings its fresh revival of beauty, as it does to the garden or the forest. In strolling through them who does not stop to read the records?—and how profoundly natural it is! Every man has one. chance of being "read;" he may hope to have

a reader for his gravestone. The instinct of humanity draws you to his grave's foot: the thought stirring within you, what experience he has had different from yours, how long he lived even. A trivial little fact about him will set you musing; a reflection, there, that seems generally to embody his sentiments or experience, will linger in your memory like music.

How far are epitaphs liable to what we call criticism? How far can the law be laid down regarding writings of such a peculiar and exceptional character? An epitaph is strictly a publication. This which seems so obvious, is really the most neglected consideration possible. An epitaph publishes itself in open sunshine to all the world; and, indeed, has a far better chance of being read, than one book out of every five hundred. It professes always to inform, to instruct, to warn, to describe. It is one of those things which everybody thinks himself competent to compose; yet a good epitaph is one of the rarest things in literature.

What is an epitaph? The name implies in its simplicity, an inscription on a tomb. That idea implies the preservation of the memory of the dead. From the sculptor of the monument to the erector of the wooden plank supported by two posts in a country church-yard, all such have the memory of the dead in view. But

there are infinite varieties of worth, and character, and adventure, and importance, to be recorded; and the epitaph soon becomes a portion of literature.

The Scandinavian chief in one age has his place of rest indicated by a huge mound; a thousand years later, a similar hero of the same race is laid in a cathedral, and his memory is preserved in writing. Intellectual culture has become the supreme honour since his day; so his memory owes its celebrity to the literary record of it. Hence, the epitaph of the great man will be no common composition. Hence, it has been felt that pre-eminent worth should be recorded in language of dignity and excellence, to express the harmony between the eminence achieved, and the culture of the age which records its admiration of it.

It is, therefore, natural that the Epitaph should become in time somewhat elaborated. A simple rude people, see in the mound of this great man a symbol of his greatness that strikes at once on the imagination. The wanderer from a distant part of the province sees it, and feels the same. There is little communication between distant people in these ages. In a cultivated age, what is written of the great man serves the mound's purpose. It is present to the popular imagination everywhere. Thus, a