thought is arrested for a moment to attach the film and gossamer of dreams, and weave them into the coarser warp of our existence ?

PERE LA CHAISE.

Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.

Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE'S Urn Burial.

THE

HE cemetery of Père la Chaise is the Westminster Abbey of Paris. Both are the dwellings of the dead; but in one they repose in green alleys and beneath the open sky, in the other their resting-place is in the shadowy aisle, and beneath the dim arches of an ancient abbey. One is a temple of nature; the other a temple of art. In one, the soft melancholy of the scene is rendered still more touching by the warble of birds and the shade of trees, and the grave receives the gentle visit of the sunshine and the shower : in the other, no sound but the passing foot-fall breaks the silence of the place; the twilight steals in through high and dusky windows; and the damps of the gloomy vault lie heavy on the heart, and leave their stain upon the mouldering tracery of the tomb.

Père la Chaise stands just beyond the Barrière d'Aulney, on a hill-side, looking towards the city. Numerous gravelwalks, winding through shady avenues and between marble monuments, lead up from the principal entrance to a chapel on the summit. There is hardly a grave that has not its little enclosure planted with shrubbery; and a thick mass of

foliage half conceals each funeral stone. The sighing of the wind, as the branches rise and fall upon it,—the occasional note of a bird among the trees, and the shifting of light and shade upon the tombs beneath, have a soothing effect upon the mind; and I doubt whether any one can enter that enclosure, where repose the dust and ashes of so many great and good men, without feeling the religion of the place steal over him, and seeing something of the dark and gloomy expression pass off from the stern countenance of death.

It was near the close of a bright summer afternoon that I visited this celebrated spot for the first time. The first object that arrested my attention on entering was a monument in the form of a small Gothic chapel which stands near the entrance, in the avenue leading to the right hand. On the marble couch within are stretched two figures carved in stone, and dressed in the antique garb of the Middle Ages. It is the tomb of Abélard and Héloïse. The history of these unfortunate lovers is too well known to need recapitulation; but perhaps it is not so well known how often their ashes were disturbed in the slumber of the grave. Abelard died in the monastery of Saint Marcel, and was buried in the vaults of the church. His body was afterwards removed to the convent of the Paraclet, at the request of Héloïse, and at her death her body was deposited in the same tomb. Three centuries they reposed together; after which they were separated to different sides of the church, to calm the delicate scruples of the lady-abbess of the convent. More than a century afterward, they were again united in the same tomb; and when at length the Paraclet was destroyed, their mouldering remains were transported to the church of Nogent-sur-Seine. They were next deposited in an ancient cloister at Paris, and now repose near the gateway of the cemetery of Père la Chaise. What a singular destiny was theirs! that after a life of such passionate and disastrous love-such sorrows, and tears, and

penitence-their very dust should not be suffered to rest quietly in the grave!-that their death should so much resemble their life in its changes and vicissitudes - its partings and its meetings-its inquietudes and its persecu tions that mistaken zeal should follow them down to the very tomb, as if earthly passion could glimmer, like a funeral lamp, amid the damps of the charnel-house, and “even in their ashes burn their wonted fires!"

As I gazed on the sculptured forms before me, and the little chapel, whose Gothic roof seemed to protect their marble sleep, my busy memory swung back the dark portals of the past, and the picture of their sad and eventful lives came up before me in the gloomy distance. What a lesson for those who are endowed with the fatal gift of genius! It would seem, indeed, that He who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," tempers also his chastisements to the errors and infirmities of a weak and simple mind, while the transgressions of him upon whose nature are more strongly marked the intellectual attributes of the Deity are followed, even upon earth, by severer tokens of the Divine displeasure. He who sins in the darkness of a benighted intellect sees not so clearly through the shadows that surround him the countenance of an offended God, but he who sins in the broad noonday of a clear and radiant mind, when at length the delirium of sensual passion has subsided and the cloud flits away from before the sun, trembles beneath the searching eye of that accusing power which is strong in the strength of a god-like intellect. Thus the mind and the heart are closely linked together, and the errors of genius bear with them their own chastisement even upon earth. The history of Abelard and Héloïse is an illustration of this truth. But at length they sleep well. Their lives are like a tale that is told, their errors are "folded up like a book," and what mortal hand shall break the seal that death has set upon them!

Leaving this interesting tomb behind me, I took a path

way to the left, which conducted me up the hill-side. I soon found myself in the deep shade of heavy foliage, where the branches of the yew and willow mingled, interwoven with the tendrils and blossoms of the honeysuckle. I now stood in the most populous part of this city of tombs. Every step awakened a new train of thrilling recollections, for at every step my eye caught the name of some one whose glory had exalted the character of his native land and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets, slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument and some beneath the simple headstone. There were the graves of Fourcroi and Hauy; of Ginguiné and Volney; of Grétry and Méhul; of Ney, and Foy, and Masséna; of La Fontaine, and Molière, and Chénier, and Delille, and Parny. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre, where are they? With the living and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its cunning in the grave, but the soul, whose high volitions. it obeyed, still lives to reproduce itself in ages yet to come.

Among these graves of genius I observed here and there a splendid monument which had been raised by the pride of family over the dust of men who could lay no claim either to the gratitude or remembrance of posterity. Their presence seemed like an intrusion into the sanctuary of genius. What had wealth to do there? Why should it crowd the dust of the great! That was no thoroughfare of business,--no mart of gain! There were no costly banquets there; no silken garments, nor gaudy liveries, nor obsequious attendants! "What servants," says Jeremy Taylor, "shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? What friends to visit us? What officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers

for our funerals ?" Material wealth gives a fictitious superiority to the living, but the treasures of intellect give a real superiority to the dead; and the rich man, who would not deign to walk the street with the starving and pennyless man of genius, deems it an honour, when death has redeemed the fame of the neglected, to have his own ashes laid beside him, and to claim with him the silent companionship of the grave.

I continued my walk through the numerous winding paths, as chance or curiosity directed me. Now I was lost in a little green hollow, overhung with thick-leaved shrubbery, and then came out upon an elevation, from which, through an opening in the trees, the eye caught glimpses of the city, and the little esplanade, at the foot of the hill, where the poor lie buried. There poverty hires its grave, and takes but a short lease of the narrow house. At the end of a few months, or at most of a few years, the tenant is dislodged to give place to another, and he in turn to a third. "Who," says Sir Thomas Browne, "knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried? who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered ?"

Yet, even in that neglected corner, the hand of affection had been busy in decorating the hired house. Most of the graves were surrounded with a slight wooden paling, to secure them from the passing footstep: there was hardly one so deserted as not to be marked with its little wooden cross, and decorated with a garland of flowers; and here and there I could perceive a solitary mourner, clothed in black, stooping to plant a shrub on the grave, or sitting in motionless sorrow beside it.

As I passed on, amid the shadowy avenues of the cemetery, I could not help comparing my own impressions with those which others have felt when walking alone among the dwellings of the dead. Are then the sculptured urn and