A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
Or blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world-or to be worse than worst
Of all that lawless and uncertain thoughts,
Imagine howling-'tis too horrible;

The weariest and most loathsome way of life,
That age, ache, penury, imprisonment,

Can lay on nature—is a paradise

To what we fear of death.”*

I have never wondered at the general popularity of this transcendantly beautiful passage. It must suit all tastes. The imaginative reader will be struck with the awful idea of going, he knows not whither, and of lying in cold obstruction;" while the common-place man will sympathize with the more tangible and positive inconvenience, of "bathing in fiery-floods," and of residing "in thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice." On me, however, the idea of being imprisoned in an ice-house, loses its effect, because I am not a subject for chilblains, and should look confidently forward to the Insolvent Act. But the dark and mysterious associations connected with being "worse than worst of all that lawless and uncertain thoughts imagine howling," almost curdles my life-blood. The whole pas

But despite this sublime accumulation of horrors, there is one thing, which, with me at least, goes a great way to moderate the dread of dissolution; and that is my comparative insignificance in life. The world will go on as well without me as when I was "unus de grege," and the few friends who weep to day upon my grave, will forget me to-morrow. "There is also another pang," says Mr. Hazlitt, (I quote from memory) "added voluntarily to the fear of death by our affecting to compasionate the loss which others will have in us. If that were all, we might reasonably be at rest." True! for notwithstanding what poets have sung, the odors arising from the memory of our departed associates, smell sweeter in fiction than in fact. They are like a fashionable suit of clothes, exceedingly becoming to the wearer, but are laid aside, or resumed at will. When I am dead, my friend, if he has no better employment, will perhaps recall the moments with which my name is connected. On a rainy day, when he is pinned to his chambers at night when he is nervous-in the morning when he is thoughtful, he may find out that I had

sage is a striking proof of Shakspeare's intuitive acquaintance with the springs of human action, and with the mechanism that sets the puppet in motion.

some decent qualities-some fellow-feelings, which it might be as well to remember. But give him an opportunity of pursuing his own selfish considerations-if a lawyer, give him a brief-if a physician, a patient, and mark how forgetful he will become. My memory will be coolly adjourned to the next rainy day, when his spirits and his pockets have attained a corresponding level. What then is there in a worldly friendship that should make me regret to leave it; or why should I prize a posthumous recollection, which springs only from the head-ache or the weather?

Another motive for contemplating our decease with calmness, consists in the sympathy of every thing around us. The principle of nature, whether animate or inanimate, tends decidedly to destruction and decay. The friends of our youth fall off-the column moulders in the dust-the flower passes away with its season, and Death with wasting hand, scatters the blight of ruin over all. Is he a stranger then, that he should surprise us; or an enemy that we should distrust his approach? Far from it! he is the night that follows the morning, when the spirit, fatigued with the labors of the day, sits longing for the hour of repose.

Pass but a few years-a few short years of sorrow and disease, and this hour of repose shall

overtake us. The church on which I now gazethe Elm-grove, which now waves its branches in the twilight, shall fall like myself, a ruin to the earth. The very flag-stone on which I am seated, shall moulder, and of the corpse that sleeps beneath it, not a trace, not a fragment shall remain. Wave on then, ye dark groves of Llansaddon, let the spring gale murmur music amid your boughs, and the autumn blast scatter abroad your foliage, for the hour is at hand when all shall be silent and forlorn.

But a truce to reflection-twilight already

darkles over the horizon, and the night-breeze from its temple, amid yon elms, is offering up an evening hymn. Hark! how gloomily its diapason swells and falls upon the ear; now pealing with the deep-toned music of an organ, and now lingering in a dying close upon the gale. It is time to retire, the breeze has sung itself to sleep, and but one faint gleam of day yet glimmers from the storied windows of the church. An instant longer and I shall be alone, with darkness and the dead.—

Stranger! whoever you may be, should chance, inclination, or necessity, lead you to the retirement of South Wales, pay a passing visit to the church yard of Llansaddon. The peacefulness of its situation will tranquillize-its beauty elevate your soul.

Whatever be your fate in life, your fancy will here meet with kindred associations. Have you been a lover, have you listened to the dying voice, have you closed the glazing eye, have you watched the parting moments of the idol of your affection? look around, and be assured, that many now lowly laid, have like yourself lived and loved in vain. Are friendless in the world? so were some who you lie slumbering beneath your feet. Is your mind untuned by the harsh discords of society? let the moral spirit of the landscape lure it back to peace, for an hour spent in contemplation beside the grave, like a study well directed, is never without its advantages.