The next day she called me:  gave directions about some few things:  said she wished to be carried home to lie by my father, but that perhaps it would be too much trouble and inconvenience to us at that season, therefore left me to do as I pleased; but that, in a black purse in her cabinet, I would find money sufficient to do it, which she had kept by her for that use, that whenever it happened, it might not straiten us.  She added, ’I have now no more to say or do:’  tenderly embraced me, and laid down her head upon the pillow, and spoke little after that.

An instance, at once touching and awful, of care for the body after the soul has gone, is furnished by certain well-known lines written by a man not commonly regarded as weak-minded or prejudiced; and engraved by his direction on the stone that marks his grave.  If I am wrong, I am content to go wrong with Shakspeare: 

    Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbear
    To dig the dust enclosed here: 
    Blest be the man that spares these stones,
    And curst be he that moves my bones.

The most eloquent exposition I know of the religious aspect of the question, is contained in the concluding sentences of Mr. Melvill’s noble sermon on the ‘Dying Faith of Joseph.’  I believe my readers will thank me for quoting it:—­

It is not a Christian thing to die manifesting indifference as to what is done with the body.  That body is redeemed:  not a particle of its dust but was bought with drops of Christ’s precious blood.  That body is appointed to a glorious condition; not a particle of the corruptible but what shall put on incorruption; of the mortal that shall not assume immortality.  The Christian knows this:  it is not the part of a Christian to seem unmindful of this.  He may, therefore, as he departs, speak of the place where he would wish to be laid.  ‘Let me sleep,’ he may say, ’with my father and my mother, with my wife and my children; lay me not here, in this distant land, where my dust cannot mingle with its kindred.  I would he chimed to my grave by my own village bell, and have my requiem sung where I was baptized into Christ.’  Marvel ye at such last words?  Wonder ye that one, whose spirit is just entering the separate state, should have this care for the body which he is about to leave to the worms?  Nay, he is a believer in Jesus as ‘the Resurrection and the Life:’  this belief prompts his dying words; and it shall have to be said of him as of Joseph, that ‘by faith,’ yea, ‘by faith,’ he ’gave commandment concerning his bones!’

If you hold this belief, my reader, you will look at a neglected churchyard with much regret; and you will highly approve of all endeavours to make the burying-place of the parish as sweet though solemn a spot as can be found within it.  I have lately read a little tract, by Mr. Hill, the Rural Dean of North Frome, in the Diocese of Hereford, entitled Thoughts on Churches and Churchyards, which is well