read the words with pleasure and gratitude.  A husband bewails a wife; a parent breathes a sigh of disappointed hope over a lost child; a son utters a sentiment of filial reverence for a departed father or mother; a friend perhaps inscribes an encomium recording the companionable qualities, or the solid virtues, of the tenant of the grave, whose departure has left a sadness upon his memory.  This and a pious admonition to the living, and a humble expression of Christian confidence in immortality, is the language of a thousand church-yards; and it does not often happen that anything, in a greater degree discriminate or appropriate to the dead or to the living, is to be found in them.  This want of discrimination has been ascribed by Dr. Johnson, in his Essay upon the epitaphs of Pope, to two causes; first, the scantiness of the objects of human praise; and, secondly, the want of variety in the characters of men; or, to use his own words, ’to the fact, that the greater part of mankind have no character at all.’  Such language may be holden without blame among the generalities of common conversation; but does not become a critic and a moralist speaking seriously upon a serious subject.  The objects of admiration in human nature are not scanty, but abundant:  and every man has a character of his own, to the eye that has skill to perceive it.  The real cause of the acknowledged want of discrimination in sepulchral memorials is this:  That to analyse the characters of others, especially of those whom we love, is not a common or natural employment of men at any time.  We are not anxious unerringly to understand the constitution of the minds of those who have soothed, who have cheered, who have supported us:  with whom we have been long and daily pleased or delighted.  The affections are their own justification.  The light of love in our hearts is a satisfactory evidence that there is a body of worth in the minds of our friends or kindred, whence that light has proceeded.  We shrink from the thought of placing their merits and defects to be weighed against each other in the nice balance of pure intellect; nor do we find much temptation to detect the shades by which a good quality or virtue is discriminated in them from an excellence known by the same general name as it exists in the mind of another; and, least of all, do we incline to these refinements when under the pressure of sorrow, admiration, or regret, or when actuated by any of those feelings which incite men to prolong the memory of their friends and kindred, by records placed in the bosom of the all-uniting and equalising receptacle of the dead.

The first requisite, then, in an Epitaph is, that it should speak, in a tone which shall sink into the heart, the general language of humanity as connected with the subject of death—­the source from which an epitaph proceeds—­of death, and of life.  To be born and to die are the two points in which all men feel themselves to be in absolute coincidence.  This general language may be uttered