One of the most popular themes of poetry and painting in the Middle Ages, and continuing down even into modern times, was the Dance of Death.  In almost all languages is it written,—­the apparition of the grim spectre, putting a sudden stop to all business, and leading men away into the “remarkable retirement” of the grave.  Itis written in an ancient Spanish Poem, and painted on a wooden bridge in Switzerland.  The designs of Holbein are well known.  The most striking among them is that, where, from a group of children sitting round a cottage hearth, Death has taken one by the hand, and is leading it out of the door.  Quietly and unresisting goes the little child, and in its countenance no grief, but wonder only; while the other children are weeping and stretching forth their hands in vain towards their departing brother.  A beautiful design it is, in all save the skeleton.  An angel had been better, with folded wings, and torch inverted!

And now the sun was growing high and warm.  A little chapel, whose door stood open, seemed to invite Flemming to enter and enjoy the grateful coolness.  He went in.  There was no one there.  The walls were covered with paintings and sculpture of the rudest kind, and with a few funeral tablets.  There was nothing there to move the heart to devotion; but in that hour the heart of Flemming was weak,—­weak as a child’s.  He bowed hisstubborn knees, and wept.  And oh! how many disappointed hopes, how many bitter recollections, how much of wounded pride, and unrequited love, were in those tears, through which he read on a marble tablet in the chapel wall opposite, this singular inscription;

“Look not mournfully into the Past.  It comes not back again.  Wisely improve the Present.  It is thine.  Go forth to meet the shadowy Future, without fear, and with a manly heart.”

It seemed to him, as if the unknown tenant of that grave had opened his lips of dust, and spoken to him the words of consolation, which his soul needed, and which no friend had yet spoken.  In a moment the anguish of his thoughts was still.  The stone was rolled away from the door of his heart; death was no longer there, but an angel clothed in white.  He stood up, and his eyes were no more bleared with tears; and, looking into the bright, morning heaven, he said;

“I will be strong!”

Men sometimes go down into tombs, with painfullongings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends; and as they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance, that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust.  So did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of the Past, with painful longings to behold once more the dear faces of those he had loved; and the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and perished as he gazed.  They, too, were dust.  And thus, far-sounding, he heard the great gate of the Past shut behind him as the Divine Poet did the gate of Paradise, when the angel pointed him the way up the Holy Mountain; and to him likewise was it forbidden to look back.