beneath which the relatives of the dead sit in cheerful converse through the long days of summer in all the luxurious quiet and happy indifference of the indolent East. Most of the visitors whom I met at the Lowell cemetery wore cheerful faces; some sauntered laughingly along, apparently unaffected by the associations of the place; too full, perhaps, of life, and energy, and high hope to apply to themselves the stern and solemn lesson which is taught even by these flower-garlanded mounds. But, for myself, I confess that I am always awed by the presence of the dead. I cannot jest above the gravestone. My spirit is silenced and rebuked before the tremendous mystery of which the grave reminds me, and involuntarily pays

"The deep reverence taught of old,

The homage of man's heart to death."

Even Nature's cheerful air, and sun, and bird voices only serve to remind me that there are those beneath who have looked on the same green leaves and sunshine, felt the same soft breeze upon their cheeks, and listened to the same wild music of the woods for the last time. Then, too, comes the saddening reflection, to which so many have given expression, that these trees will put forth their leaves, the slant sunshine still fall upon green meadows and banks of flowers, and the song of the birds and the ripple of waters still be heard after our eyes

and ears have closed forever. It is hard for us to realize this. We are so accustomed to look upon these things as a part of our life environment that it seems strange that they should survive us. Tennyson, in his exquisite metaphysical poem of the Two Voices, has given utterance to this sentiment:

"Alas! though I should die, I know

That all about the thorn will blow

In tufts of rosy-tinted snow.

Not less the bee will range her cells,

The furzy prickle fire the dells,

The foxglove cluster dappled bells."

"THE PLEASURES OF THE TOMBS!"

Undoubtedly,

in the language of the Idumean seer, there are many who "rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave,” who long for it "as the servant earnestly desireth the shadow." Rest, rest to the sick heart and the weary brain, to the long afflicted and the hopeless - rest on the calm bosom of our common mother. Welcome to the tired ear, stunned and confused with life's jarring discords, the everlasting silence; grateful to the weary eyes which "have seen evil, and not good," the everlasting shadow.

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Yet over all hangs the curtain of a deep mystery – curtain lifted only on one side by the hands of those who

are passing under its solemn shadow. No voice speaks to us from beyond it, telling of the unknown state; no hand from within puts aside the dark drapery to reveal the mysteries towards which we are all moving. "Man giveth up the ghost; and where is he?"

Thanks to our heavenly Father, he has not left us altogether without an answer to this momentous question. Over the blackness of darkness a light is shining. The valley of the shadow of death is no longer 66 a land of darkness and where the light is as darkness." The presence of a serene and holy life pervades it. Above its pale tombs and crowded burial-places, above the wail of despairing humanity, the voice of Him who awakened. life and beauty beneath the graveclothes of the tomb at Bethany is heard proclaiming, "I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE." We know not, it is true, the conditions of our future life; we know not what it is to pass from this state of being to another; but before us in that dark passage has gone the Man of Nazareth, and the light of his footsteps lingers in the path. Where he, our Brother in his humanity, our Redeemer in his divine nature, has gone, let us not fear to follow. He who ordereth all aright will uphold with his own great arm the frail spirit when its incarnation is ended; and it may be, that, in language which I have elsewhere used,

when Time's veil shall fall asunder, The soul may know

No fearful change nor sudden wonder,

Nor sink the weight of mystery under,

But with the upward rise and with the vastness grow.

And all we shrink from now may seem

No new revealing;

Familiar as our childhood's stream,

Or pleasant memory of a dream,

The loved and cherished past upon the new life stealing.

Serene and mild the untried light

May have its dawning;

As meet in summer's northern night

The evening gray and dawning white,

The sunset hues of Time blend with the soul's new morning.

I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." I profess no indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasoned feet on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her yashmack; schoolboys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this to complain of. A storm of