As the afternoon wore away, the family trio assembled on the shaded end of the north verandah, and with intuitive delicacy, Regina shrank from intruding on the final interview which appeared so sacred.

Followed by Hero, she went through the shrubbery, and down a walk bordered with ancient cedars, which led to a small gate that opened into the adjoining churchyard.

In accordance with a custom long since fallen hopelessly into desuetude, but prevailing when the venerable church was erected, it had been placed in the centre of a spacious square, every yard of which had subsequently become hallowed as the last resting-place of families who had passed away, since the lofty spire rose like a huge golden finger pointing heavenward.  An avenue of noble elms led from the iron gate to the broad stone steps; and on either side and behind the church swelled the lines of mounds, some white with marble, some green with turf, now and then a heap of mossy shells—­not a few gay with flowers—­all scrupulously free from weeds, and those most melancholy symptoms of neglect, which even in public cemeteries too often impress the beholder with gloomy premonitions of his own inevitable future, and recall the solemn admonition of the Talmud:  “Life is a passing shadow.  Is it the shadow of a tower, or of a tree?  A shadow that prevails for a while?  No, it is the shadow of a bird in his flight,—­away flies the bird, and there remains neither bird nor shadow.”

Has the profoundly religious sentiment of reverence for the domains of death lost or gained by the modern practice of municipal monopoly of the right of sepulture?  Who, amid the pomp and splendour of Greedwood or Mount Auburn, where human vanity builds its own proud monument in the mausoleums of the dead,—­who, in hurrying along the broad and beautiful avenues thronged with noisy groups of chattering pedestrians, and with gay equipages that render the name “City of silence” a misnomer, converting it into a quasi Festa ground, a scene for subdued Sunday Fete Champetre,—­who, passing from these magnificent city cemeteries, into some primitive old-fashioned churchyard, such as that of V——­, has not suddenly been almost overpowered by the contrast presented:  the deep brooding solemnity, the holy hush, the pervading indwelling atmosphere of true sanctity that distinguishes the latter?

Could any other than the simple ancient churchyard of bygone days have suggested that sweetest, purest, noblest elegy in our mother tongue?  Do not our hearts yearn with an intense and tender longing toward that church, at whose font we were baptized, at whose communion-table we reverently bowed, before whose altar we breathed the marriage vows, from whose silent chancel we shall one day be softly and slowly borne away to our last, long sleep?  Why not lay us down to rest, where the organ that pealed at our wedding and sobbed its requiem over our senseless clay may still breathe its loving dirges across our graves in winter’s