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making itself up to a contingent, not remotely calculated, but felt to be hovering awfully near." We agree that the looking in is better than would have been the going in; but imagine the calm patient, conscious of his doom, glancing round the desolate precincts of a city churchyard, or prying into a horrid vault through the iron grating!
Let us pass the Lodge, and enter at the gates of the Cemetery. We are struck—first, doubtless, with the surrounding landscape, so rich in cultivation, in character so diversified, in extent so sweeping; next, with the beauty of that Garden of Death which is spread on either side of us, adorned with evergreens and flowers, broken with small clumps of trees, and covered with buildings tastefully designed. It is on these that our feelings pause, and surprise makes itself felt amidst the solemnity that fills the mind. Standing on that slight eminence, we are startled by the number of the monuments. It is scarcely ten years since the sheep were driven from their pasture, and already has there been about six thousand interments within that noble and spacious enclosure. The Cemetery comprises upwards of 40 acres of ground. Looking to the right from the entrance, a central walk leads to the church at some distance, in front of which is a large circle appropriated to many of the more splendid and spacious tombs and mausoleums. The north walk, skirting the wall along the public road, conducts us to the Catacombs and the Colonnade, whence there is a branch-walk across the Cemetery; passing which we reach the west walk, and arrive at the south path running on the canal side, which conducts us again to the entrance. Here, in the space beyond, we traverse the ground set apart for the burial of dissenters of every denomination, having a chapel for the performance of service according to their several forms of worship.
Before we enter either of the walks, we are attracted by a cluster of white marble monuments, prefiguring by their beauty the sacred tributes beyond. Amongst them is an elegant column, on which is chiselled a withered lily; and on the top, white as snow, is a young lamb, bound and dying. "Julia Lamb" is the inscription below. Pitying and sad is the sentiment with which the beholder turns aside; and close by, he sees, surmounting a granite tomb, a marble pillar, with the inscription—
"Grateful children in sacred remembrance of beloved parents."
At a little distance is another filial tribute, a plain stone rising amidst flowers—
"To the memory of Sir Anthony Carlisle, his affectionate daughters inscribe this stone."
And between the two, stands a handsome monument to Wyndham Lewis, M.P.—
"Erected by his widow, Mary Anne Lewis, who was united to him for seventeen years of unbroken happiness."
Rejoice, then! is the silent reflection with which we turn away; rejoice, then, ye who despond over the world's woes, and rush to meet the shadow of death as he advances! Life is something more than a walk by the grave's side, a looking down, and a sudden fall! Though budding infancy and blooming youth mingle their dust at our feet, to others may fall the fairer lot, the poet's dream, "years of unbroken happiness!"
Turning to the north walk, we pause before a broken pillar of white marble to
"James Lansdown, architect, erected as a testimony of their esteem by a few friends."
And at the family grave of "John Gosling" we stop to transcribe one of those frequent tributes, in which the mere overflow of sorrow, without the slightest inspiration of the fancy, seeks in the form of poetry an expression to which ordinary forms of language seem hopelessly inadequate:—
A tender mother, and a faithful wife;
No peace, nor comfort, shall I ever have,
Till I lie by her in the silent grave."
But there are inscriptions which touch at once the imagination and the affections. "Who can help being moved," says the friend already adverted to, "by the glowing fire and radiance of an agonized love, which thus disperses the clouds hanging on the skirts of the world?
"'Young, beautiful, and good, God in his mercy numbered her with his angels at the early age of seventeen.'
"It seems as impious to doubt the faith as the love which dictated this inscription. A fact is assumed with all the confidence of an eye-witness. The letters with which the stone is firmly indented are but faint types of the vivid image stamped on the mind of the bereaved parent that his young, his beautiful, his virtuous child, is now and for ever an angel of light, admitted as one of that burning row of bright seraphim ministering before the throne of the Most High." The tears called forth by the inscription thus recorded fall upon the grave of Mary Scott Hogarth, sister of Mrs. Charles Dickens. Beside her lies her brother,
"George Hogarth, aged twenty. Like her, he was taken ill and died in one night."