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past and present, the public should be barred, without the payment of an admission fee; a regulation which, while it debases the character of a national exhibition, excludes the generality of the people, and defeats every legitimate purpose for which these memorials of the great and good were erected. An additional evil is, that the visitor is hurried over a space and spectacle whose very essence is destroyed if not traversed and seen with freedom, quiet, and calm contemplation. Under the present regulations of abbey economy, the charm is almost dissolved which would otherwise preserve the memory of those heroic achievements of our fleets and armies, those labours of the statesman and the legislator, of the man of science and the poet, all of rank and of literature, to which these testimonials of a nation's gratitude have been raised, by public or private expense. It is not only interring the body, but burying the monument too; and the lament has been hardly more for the departed, than for the labours of art, the value of which is so much depreciated by this miserable expedient to obtain money. It is humiliating to reflect on the debasing character which the mischievous atrocities of a few ignorant or unthinking individuals have, in some degree, brought upon the nation at large, and which, it is said, have

led to these obnoxious regulations, and given us, in the eyes of foreigners, at once the stamp of a mercenary and a barbarious people; but it is, however, to be hoped that, with an increasing knowledge of the fine arts, the progress of instruction, and the consequent prevalence of good sense, a way may be found to protect these records of our country's glory and talent, without imposing a tax upon those who might benefit by such examples in the endeavour to imitate them.

From the tombs and monuments within, is but a step to those without; from the church to the churchyard-whence, as the poet says,-"The voice of nature cries." But, like many other poetical assertions, this is somewhat equivocal, for little dependence can be placed on these "frail memorials," many of which, like the old moralities, are calculated to excite a laugh rather than serious and sober reflections. In some places, indeed, scarce a stone is raised but a jest is raised with it.

It is hardly possible to touch on the subject of epitaphs, but a train of uncouth rhymes follow, in the shape of serious foolery or ignorant burlesque. Nor is this folly confined to the obscure village

dormitory, or to times long past: there is scarcely a churchyard within the metropolis or its suburbs, but will afford some modern examples of gross ignorance or inflated nonsense; such as," God has chosen her as a pattern for the other angels."

This exquisite piece of extravagance, to say no more of it, was intended doubtless to convey an exalted idea of the departed; no reflection whatever being made on the absurdity of the hyperbole.

It is somewhat remarkable, that men should be so very anxious in life that their remains should not be disturbed after death, and yet take no heed of what may be said upon their tombs; men write their autobiographies, and why not their own epitaphs?— Virgil did. Or why not have recourse to the Vicar of Wakefield's plan, who wrote his wife's epitaph when living, commending in it the virtues he wished her to practice? At all events, it might be imagined that either the pulpit or the press would have come in aid to check this prevalent absurdity; that, if men chose to make "life a jest," they should not be permitted to record one on their tombs.

But, not to dwell longer on churchyard regula

tions, let us take a brief view of mortality as exhibited under the refined sentiment of the Greek mythology and of Grecian art.

"The ancients contemplated death without terror, and met it with indifference. It was the only divinity to which they never sacrificed, convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. They raised altars to Favour, to Misfortune, to all the evils of life; for these might change. But, though they did not court the presence of Death in any shape, they acknowledged its tranquillity in the beautiful fables of their allegorical religion. Death was the daughter of Night and the sister of Sleep, and ever the friend of the unhappy.

"If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them, it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpse and a dawn of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the transmigration of the soul:-a butterfly on the extremity of a lamp,-Love with a melancholy air, leaning on an inverted torch, elegantly denoted the cessation of life."*

*J. D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, Second Series, vol. 2.

It was in contemplating this touching and appropriate representation, as it appears in an engraved gem, that Mr. Croly produced those beautiful lines in his Illustrations of Antique Gems:

"Spirit of the drooping wing,
And the ever-weeping eye,
Thou of all earth's kings art king:
Empires at thy footstool lie.
Beneath thee strew'd,

Their multitude

Sink like waves upon the shore,-
Storms shall never rouse them more.

"What's the grandeur of the earth
To the grandeur of thy throne?
Riches, glory, beauty, birth,

To thy kingdom all have gone.
Before thee stand

The wondrous band,—

Bards, heroes, side by side,

Who darken'd nations when they died!

"Earth hath hosts, but thou canst show
Many a million for her one:
Through thy gate the mortal flow

Has for countless years roll'd on.
Back from the tomb

No step has come;

There fix'd, till the last thunder's sound
Shall bid thy prisoners be unbound."

Beautiful as the emblem of Mortality in the weeping infant, with the inverted torch, certainly is, that of the butterfly is no less apt in representing

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