flowers on the grave; and no old writer, how rigid soever, has reprobated this innocent, beautiful, and most suggestive custom.

And so fulfilled with the grace and benediction of Him whom they had learned to know of their Father in Heaven, as their Redeemer to all eternity, in faith and hope, in the exercise of prayer and almsgiving, the early Christians were enabled to give hearty thanks to God, that he had been pleased to "deliver their brethren out of the miseries of this sinful world."

THE APPLETON MONUMENT.

This monument stands in Woodbine Path, and was erected by Mr. Samuel Appleton, of Boston. It is a miniature Grecian Temple, of fine Italian marble, surmounted by funereal lamps, with appropriate devices on its façade. It is the work of Italian artists.

EPITAPHS AND INSCRIPTIONS.

EVERY person of intelligence and sensibility is alive to the beauties of a brief, simple, and appropriate epitaph which excites a reverence for the dead, and awakens an interest in the events of his life. When we encounter a headstone without an epitaph, it seems like a book with a mere title page, while the leaves that follow are blank. It is an indispensable appendage to a monument, and we turn from one that is without it as from a work of sculpture that is unfinished. The propriety of this tribute to the dead is universally admitted; and it is not, therefore, a useless task to endeavor to define the principles by which the composition of it should be governed; for if one that is appropriate and well written, is pleasing to the most indifferent reader, one that is awkward, highsounding or exaggerated, is ludicrous and demeaning to the character of the subject.

There are some epitaphs that relate particularly to the dead, and are commonly panegyrical; others that make no direct allusion to the dead, but aim merely to convey a pleasing sentiment or an instructive moral. The former are the most difficult work for the writer; because it requires great discrimination, in elegiac composition, to avoid the extreme of panegyric, or to present, in a few words, the most appropriate thoughts and images, and to select those points which would produce the most vivid effect upon the mind of the reader. If one is extravagant in his praises of the dead, the reader is sceptical of the truth of those praises; if the epitaph be long, it will not be read; and though it were brief, the points selected may not be those which would produce the most favorable impression.