nature, so can the tracing of them be interesting only to a few.  But an epitaph is not a proud writing shut up for the studious:  it is exposed to all—­to the wise and the most ignorant; it is condescending, perspicuous, and lovingly solicits regard; its story and admonitions are brief, that the thoughtless, the busy, and indolent, may not be deterred, nor the impatient tired:  the stooping old man cons the engraven record like a second horn-book;—­the child is proud that he can read it;—­and the stranger is introduced through its mediation to the company of a friend:  it is concerning all, and for all:—­in the church-yard it is open to the day; the sun looks down upon the stone, and the rains of heaven beat against it.

Yet, though the writer who would excite sympathy is bound in this case, more than in any other, to give proof that he himself has been moved, it is to be remembered, that to raise a monument is a sober and a reflective act; that the inscription which it bears is intended to be permanent, and for universal perusal; and that, for this reason, the thoughts and feelings expressed should be permanent also—­liberated from that weakness and anguish of sorrow which is in nature transitory, and which with instinctive decency retires from notice.  The passions should be subdued, the emotions controlled; strong, indeed, but nothing ungovernable or wholly involuntary.  Seemliness requires this, and truth requires it also:  for how can the narrator otherwise be trusted?  Moreover, a grave is a tranquillising object:  resignation in course of time springs up from it as naturally as the wild flowers, besprinkling the turf with which it may be covered, or gathering round the monument by which it is defended.  The very form and substance of the monument which has received the inscription, and the appearance of the letters, testifying with what a slow and laborious hand they must have been engraven, might seem to reproach the author who had given way upon this occasion to transports of mind, or to quick turns of conflicting passion; though the same might constitute the life and beauty of a funeral oration or elegiac poem.

These sensations and judgments, acted upon perhaps unconsciously, have been one of the main causes why epitaphs so often personate the deceased, and represent him as speaking from his own tomb-stone.  The departed Mortal is introduced telling you himself that his pains are gone; that a state of rest is come; and he conjures you to weep for him no longer.  He admonishes with the voice of one experienced in the vanity of those affections which are confined to earthly objects, and gives a verdict like a superior Being, performing the office of a judge, who has no temptations to mislead him, and whose decision cannot but be dispassionate.  Thus is death disarmed of its sting, and affliction unsubstantialised.  By this tender fiction, the survivors bind themselves to a sedater sorrow, and employ the intervention of