with an epigram or a dissertation. A sentiment conveyed in language simple enough to be intelligible to all, banishes the suspicion that the writer is endeavoring unjustly to exalt the dead above his real merits. The epitaph should be simple, that all may understand it; obvious, that it may require no study; brief, that all may read it; moderate, that it may be credited; poetical, that it may lay hold of the imagination; cheerful, that it may reconcile us to our inevitable fate; religious, that it may inspire the hope of a new life.

An epitaph is of no value, if it does not obtain the faith and the sympathy of the general reader. For this end it should give proof of the writer's own deep feeling and sincerity. He must address the reader, therefore, as a humble friend of the departed, and not as a sermonist or a censor. He must be serious and solemn, but not gloomy; believing and hopeful, but not extravagantly elated. His lamentations must be heartfelt, but not too painfully wrought; for the reader, though he loves to sympathize, does not wish to be afflicted. We sympathize more easily with sorrow that is sincere without despondency; for we wish to see a probability that the mourner will obtain relief and a renewal of happiness, as we are delighted with the promise of morning that gleams through the darkness of night. An epitaph should make no parade of one's lamentations, any more than of the virtues of the subject. As a silent tear flowing down the cheek of an unquestionable mourner, excites more sympathy than boisterous wailing, so does one line of tender anguish affect the sensibility of the reader more deeply than a long paragraph of earnest complaint.

A sepulchral monument is no place for wit or for satire. We may be excited to mirth by a humorous epitaph upon a gravestone; but it interrupts the flow of

tender melancholy which one is disposed to cherish in his meditations among the tombs. It disqualifies the mind to receive congenial impressions, and does not avert gloomy reflections with the same power as the hopeful utterance of religious faith. Satire, which is always more or less malignant, ought to find no place here. Anything like malice or contempt towards our fellow beings, should never be exhibited in these sacred inclosures. The sight of the graves of our fellow men brings forcibly to mind the reflection that we are all travelling the same road; and here we should unite in mutual trust and forbearance; and if we have lessons to impart to the living in the lines which we carve upon the monuments of the dead, let them be conveyed in the simple language of love. Let the graveyard be a school of religion and virtue, not a place for the wit of the epigrammatist or the sneers of the misanthrope.

Death must be mentioned as our inevitable fate, and as the occasion of sorrow; but not as the cause of despondency, or the destroyer of hope. The tomb should be invested with those circumstances that will shed light on the gloom of the grave; and nothing serves more effectually to diffuse this cheerfulness around it, than a poetical and hopeful inscription that points to a world beyond this mortal sphere.

The individual commemorated is to be presented to the reader as one who has not lived in vain, nor died without hope; and the claims upon the reader's interest and sympathy should be based on his ordinary, not extraordinary deserts. The first idea commands our sympathy, the second excites our incredulity. If the subject has performed certain noble and heroic acts, it is better to name the acts, and let them praise him, than to follow them with extravagant laudation. To say that one died in

his efforts to save others from perishing, is stating a fact that exalts him to a hero, and no eulogy could elevate the reader's idea of his heroism.

We should cast a veil of charity over the faults of one whom we wish to commemorate, and a veil of modest claims over the lustre of his virtues, that we may not wrong his memory by harsh judgment, nor excite envy by praising him with exaggeration. An epitaph is not to be a daguerreotype of the character of the dead; but it should resemble an illuminated shadow in which we may see a pleasing resemblance to him, that shall excite our veneration the more, because of the indistinctness of its delineations. The more general the praise the better, provided its meaning is significant; for as soon as we descend to particular points in our eulogy, we may possibly be opposed by the opinion of those who knew the subject of it.

But it is not the virtuous alone who may be made the subjects of an affecting epitaph. If the dead has been unfortunate on account of his vices, the writer might carefully allude to them in some cases, not to hold him up to execration, but to mourn over his fate, to hint at the virtues which he might have cultivated, and to offer a kindly warning to those who are tempted to go astray in like manner. All this should be done as we eulogize the virtues of a good man, with care and moderation; and so kindly, that the reader may even suppose that a brother or sister might have written it, while overwhelmed with the kindest as well as the saddest recollections.

15

THE BURIAL GROUND AT SIDON.

BY MARY HOWITT.

THE burial ground, with the old ruin, supposed to be the castle of Louis IX, is without the town; and the tall trees cast their shadows on the sepulchres, some fallen and ruined, others newly whited and gilt, covered with sentences in the Turkish character, the headstones usually presenting a turban on a pedestal. Several women had come to mourn over the graves of their relatives, in white cloaks and veils that enveloped them from head to foot; they mostly mourned in silence, and knelt on the steps of the tomb, or among the wild flowers which grew rank on the soil. The morning light fell partially on the sepulchres, and on the broken towers of the ancient castle; but the greater part of the thickly-peopled cemetery was still in gloom - the gloom which the Orientals love. They do not like to come to the tombs in the glare of day; early morn and even are the favorite seasons, especially the latter. This burial ground of Sidon is one of the most picturesque on the coast of Syria. The ruin of Louis, tells, like the sepulchres, that this life's hope and pride is as a tale that is told. When the moon is on its towers, on the trees and tombs beneath, and on the white figures that slowly move to and fro, the scene is solemn, and cannot be forgotten.

The dead are everywhere!

The mountain-side, the plain, the woods profound;

All the wide earth,

Is one vast burial ground!

Within the populous street;

In stately homes; in places high;

In pleasure domes where pomp and luxury meet,
Men bow themselves to die.

The old man at his door;

The unweaned child murmuring its wordless song; The bondman and the free; the rich, the poor; All, all, to death belong!

The sunlight gilds the walls

Of kingly sepulchres enwrought with brass; And the long shadow of the cypress falls Athwart the common grass.

The living of gone time

Builded their glorious cities by the sea; And awful in their greatness sat sublime, As if no change could be.

There was the eloquent tongue;

e;

The poet's heart; the sage's soul was there And loving women with their children young, The faithful and the fair!

They were, but they are not;

Suns rose and set, and earth put on her bloom, Whilst man, submitting to the common lot, Went down into the tomb.

And still amid the wrecks

Of mighty generations passed away,

Earth's boonest growth, the fragrant wild-flower decks The tombs of yesterday.