But the sweets of that widow’s present sorrow will be soon extracted.  How many weeks will she find it a pleasure to make morning visits here and plait pretty flowers on the grave of her husband?—­The grave in the next inclosure furnishes an answer to the question.  A few months ago, it, too, was tended at sunrise by just such a tearful woman; but now the wreaths of evergreen are yellow, and the weeds are springing up among the withered garlands.  The living partner has visited already the “mitigated grief” department of the mourning store, and the severed cords of her affections have been spliced and made almost as good as new.  Not that I would not have it so; not that I believe the grief of woman to be less real and sincere than man’s, though it be enjoyed; not that I would have her thrum a long mournful threnody on the harpstrings of her heart, and waste on the dead, who need them not, affections which, Heaven knows, the living need too much.

Retracing my steps, and descending the opposite slope of the hill, I entered a beautiful vale covered with stately tombs and containing a little lake, in the middle of which a fountain was springing high into the air.  In a spot so much frequented at a later hour of the day only a single human being was in sight,—­a young man, perhaps five-and-twenty years of age, jauntily dressed, and his upper lip adorned with a long moustache, who was leaning lazily upon a marble balustrade, and staring, with a stupid, vacant look, at the massive monument it surrounded.  As nothing appeared at the moment more attractive to my eyes, I fixed them upon him.  No great skill in deciphering human character is required to tell his past or foretell his future history, or even to read the few poor spent thoughts that flicker in his brain.  His father—­some city merchant—­died last year, and left him a man of leisure, with a fortune on his hands to spend in idleness and dissipation.  This is the first anniversary of the old gentleman’s decease and departure to another and better world, and the hopeful heir of his bank-stock and buildings has, as a matter of etiquette, come out here from the city this morning to pass an hour of solemn meditation—­as he calls the sixty minutes in which he does not smoke or swear—­by the old man’s grave.  I observe him every moment forming a firm resolution to fix his feeble thoughts upon sober things and his latter end, and breaking it the second afterwards:  the effort is too much for the exhausted condition of his mind, and results in a total failure.  He is evidently well pleased that any attention is directed towards him, and fancies that I regard him as a very dutiful son, and his appearance here, so early in the morning and long before breakfast, a remarkable example of posthumous filial affection.  To intensify, if possible, this sentiment in my breast, he has just now pulled out a white cambric handkerchief and pretends to be wiping tears from his eyes.  Poor fellow! you have no natural talent for the solemn parts in acting, or you would know that the expression which your face now wears is not that of sorrow, solemnity, meekness, gentleness, humility, or any other sober Christian grace or virtue.  But I leave you, for I see something more attractive now.  Stand thy hour out, young man! we shall meet again.