attempting to reform his churchyard, because, through the negligence of his predecessors, he may find Epitaphs which excite his regret, for it is so much the more necessary that he should counteract their influence by some of a better character. As it respects those which ought not to have been admitted, there is this consolation, that time will obliterate them. Thus, after a while they may all be superseded by inscriptions, the excellency of which will insure their perpetuity in his own churchyard, and cause them to appear in others. How delightful is it to the serious Christian to enter a churchyard, and find that the vigilance and care of the clergyman has made it auxiliary to the work of the ministry, by inscriptions which warn the young -alarm the thoughtless-guide the devout― cheer the disconsolate-and teach all, as they mourn for the dead, to seek their happiness in the living God!

Why should not the retired cemetery or the sequestered churchyard be rendered one of the most inviting places for devotional retirement and serious meditation? Why should not every churchyard "become a book of instruction, and every grave-stone a leaf of edification?' Why should not the monumental stone, as well as the pulpit, direct us to "behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world?" We are all dying creatures; the sentence of death has been passed on all why then should not the memorials for the dead point us to Jesus, "the life of them that believe, and the resurrection of the dead?" And while the sculptured stone records the vanities of earth, and the shortness of time, why should it not also make mention of the glories of heaven and the joys of eternity, that those who delay or linger in their course may be excited "to press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of

God in Christ Jesus," and "to so run that they may obtain"? Let the ministers of our Church awake to a sense of their responsibility in this matter, and then we may confidently anticipate that each memorial to the dead will be a suitable address to the living.

In furnishing the Sculptor with so great a number and variety of Epitaphs as he will find collected under their several heads, it formed no part of the Writer's design to provide a work he might indiscriminately make use of. It was not prepared to render the vigilant superintendence of his Clerical brethren unnecessary, but to give them, when under the necessity of rejecting an inscription, something better to offer. As we know that from Epitaphs, good in themselves, an unsuitable one may be selected, there is the greater reason why, before it is engraved, it should be submitted to the friendly and impartial judgment of the Clergyman in whose church or churchyard it is designed to be placed; for, blinded

by affection, there is, as will be fully shown in the Essay, a great proneness in the living to honour the dead with virtues they never possessed, and with a piety they never attained, or even sought after. Whether, therefore, an inscription be selected from this or any other work, or from the Bible alone, it ought, in courtesy, to be submitted to the Clergyman, for the sake of his kind and impartial opinion,

In the Appendix will be found much interesting matter on several subjects, which could not be comprised in the Essay, together with a short outline of those sepulchral customs and monumental inscriptions which will give the reader a concise view of the funeral rites and ceremonies observed in our own country from the earliest to the latest period of her history; and which, while they have varied so much in different ages, show one unchanged and unchangeable feeling of veneration for the remains of the dead.

ESSAY.

Ir is not the design of the Writer to preface this work with an essay on sepulchral customs in general. On such an extensive subject a considerable volume might be compiled. Not only have they varied in different countries, and at different periods, but it would require too much space even to describe the rites and ceremonies which have obtained in England, through all their different grades, from the mummeries of a Romish funeral down to the unostentatious burial of a Quaker, or the silent and unceremonial interment of a Scotch Presbyterian.