Then in some rural, calm, sequestered spot,
    Where healing Nature her benignant look
    Ne’er changes, save at that lorn season, when,
    With tresses drooping o’er her sable stole,
    She yearly mourns the mortal doom of man,
    Her noblest work, (so Israel’s virgins erst,
    With annual moan upon the mountains wept
    Their fairest gone,) there in that rural scene,
    So placid, so congenial to the wish
    The Christian feels, of peaceful rest within
    The silent grave, I would have stayed: 

* * * * *

—­wandered forth, where the cold dew of heaven Lay on the humbler graves around, what time The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds, Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse, Twere brooding on the dead inhumed beneath.  There while with him, the holy man of Uz, O’er human destiny I sympathised, Counting the long, long periods prophecy Decrees to roll, ere the great day arrives Of resurrection, oft the blue-eyed Spring Had met me with her blossoms, as the Dove, Of old, returned with olive leaf, to cheer The Patriarch mourning o’er a world destroyed:  And I would bless her visit; for to me ’Tis sweet to trace the consonance that links As one, the works of Nature and the word Of God.—­JOHN EDWARDS.

A village church-yard, lying as it does in the lap of Nature, may indeed be most favourably contrasted with that of a town of crowded population; and sepulture therein combines many of the best tendencies which belong to the mode practised by the Ancients, with others peculiar to itself.  The sensations of pious cheerfulness, which attend the celebration of the sabbath-day in rural places, are profitably chastised by the sight of the graves of kindred and friends, gathered together in that general home towards which the thoughtful yet happy spectators themselves are journeying.  Hence a parish-church, in the stillness of the country, is a visible centre of a community of the living and the dead; a point to which are habitually referred the nearest concerns of both.

As, then, both in cities and villages, the dead are deposited in close connection with our places of worship, with us the composition of an epitaph naturally turns, still more than among the nations of antiquity, upon the most serious and solemn affections of the human mind; upon departed worth—­upon personal or social sorrow and admiration—­upon religion, individual and social—­upon time, and upon eternity.  Accordingly, it suffices, in ordinary cases, to secure a composition of this kind from censure, that it contain nothing that shall shock or be inconsistent with this spirit.  But, to entitle an epitaph to praise, more than this is necessary.  It ought to contain some thought or feeling belonging to the mortal or immortal part of our nature touchingly expressed; and if that be done, however general or even trite the sentiment may be, every man of pure mind will