is near the southern cliff. Farther north a crag rises out of the stream, its upper surface covered with green clover of the most vivid freshness. Not only all night, but all day, has the dew lain upon its purity.

"With my eye attaining the uppermost margin, where the waters shoot over, I look away into the western sky, and discern there (what you least expect) a cow chewing her cud with admirable composure, and higher up several sheep and lambs browsing celestial buds. They stand on the eminence that forms the background of my present view. The illusion is extremely picturesque-such as Allston himself would despair of producing.

paint like Nature?'"

Who can

HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES.

An amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures of Tombs a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meekspirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite principles from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a virtuous character.

"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue, that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting. From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence

it is that we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very lively manner. A simple, unornamented grave there causes more tears to of a cathedral interment. sublimity; it ascends with

flow than the gaudy splendor There it is that grief assumes the aged yews in the church

yard; it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with all the effects of Nature - with the

dawning of the morning, with the murmuring of the winds, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of the night."

Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead" a tract of some forty or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and covered with a heavy growth of forest trees, among which the white oak is conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills, its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a solitary farm house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the great life tree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted foliage of the autumnal forest.

Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity, the young, the beautiful, the gay, busy, wealthseeking manhood of middle years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs, hurrying

on, on,— car after car, like the generations of man sweeping over the track of time to their last still restingplace.

It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite resort. The young, the buoyant, the lighthearted come and linger among these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the songs of birds in these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sada sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the language of Wordsworth,

"In youth we love the darkling lawn,
Brushed by the owlet's wing;

Then evening is preferred to dawn,

And autumn to the spring.
Sad fancies do we then affect,

In luxury of disrespect

To our own prodigal excess

Of too familiar happiness."

The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have adorned and decorated their grave grounds with shrubs and sweet flowers as places of popular resort. The Turks have their graveyards planted with trees, through which the sun looks in upon the turban stones of the faithful, and