be the garden of our Lord-that those whose bodies rest here, rest all in Him who sanctifies the grave and sweetens death itself. But we cannot quarrel with that feeling which seeks to render beautiful and attractive a place so often associated with unnecessary horrors and gratuitous annoyance.

Yet we read a lesson of the world's hollow-heartedness even in the amenities around us. The poetry that dictated a graceful resting-place for those it loved, has all exhaled, leaving them alone with their flowers or their gorgeous mausolea. Of the threescore thousand souls with whom we jostled yesterday, not one perhaps will pay this place a visit. As we sit beneath these cloisters, the breathless stilness of an autumn morning seems to float around us, and we think of "Silence listening to silence." The voices that waken up just now are the first we have heard to-day, and they are not those of mourners, judging from the parti-colored dress and reckless tone of the chief speaker. Death may be eloquent, but he has no one to hear his teachings; for the living will not lay them to heart.

A few swallows are glancing to and fro, and the distant barking of dogs, mingles with the "cock's shrill clarion." But every thing besides is still. The air is loaded almost oppressively with the scent of roses; the day warm but cloudy, and tempered with soft airs. Every thing invites to retirement and happy communion with God and our own hearts, but the place is a blooming desert, where none are "coming and going." The busy world has found a substitute for its appearance in the house of mourning, and a speaking substitute it often is. Roses take the place of regrets. The bright scarlet of the geranium or the flaunting turk's-cap, breaks upon the eye as a trumpetnote would thrill the ear, while we pace this lovely garden, and carries us back again to the showy and loud world we hoped to have left behind us. Little as we are moved by eastern notions generally, we are firm believers in the poetry of flowers-not in that poetry "picked up out of a book" which connects them with intrigue and romance, but in that innate sense, which unwittingly but necessarily, associates them with the holier feelings of our nature-reads them as the "alphabet of angels," and records by their aid, thoughts too immature to find expression in words. There is a lovely fuschia, dropping its rich crimson

blossoms over the mouldering dust of one of Christ's little ones. A few weeks of watchfulness, a few days of anxious wrestling for a longer loan, succeeded by a joy with which no stranger intermeddles; and the sorrowing mother laid her infant Ada there, inscribing on the modest stone that marks its restingplace, this sweet assurance of its blessedness in Christ-"He shall carry the lambs in His bosom."

Can Poetry, sanctified and sublimed by Revelation, speak more touchingly than here? And who can say that the sentiment owes nothing to the pensile beauty of the flower? Many are the graves entwined with roses, varying from purple to pure white. Here is another form of poetry in flowers-it is figure in the fuschia, but fragrance in the rose, which speaks. Not unfrequently it would seem to be association. A son of the hills lies here, with no other record than a miniature forest of wild thyme tufting his lowly resting-place, and on another grave, carefully enclosed by a stone nosing, the vagrant sonchus lævis " grows broader and higher." Honeysuckle, cypress,

fuschia, the white rose, and other flowers embroider a third, and your sympathy is thus earnestly besought

"Spare what thou seest, for spoil would but increase

The bitter anguish of a parent's breast,

Who finds it soothing, thus to deck the tomb,
And dress the green sod where his child's at rest.

"These fragrant flowers, the fairest of their kind,
Recal to memory, for ever dear,

Some sweet bewitching grace of form or mind,

And bloom the emblem of her, buried here."

The dignity of human nature suffers, in our opinion, far less by the fact that all men share one common grave, than by the evidence we have before us, that so large a majority participate in the same low standard of beauty, purity, and truth. Bad taste, bad poetry, and worst of all, bad theology, pervade the place. What feeling can have dictated the exclamation eternized upon a tomb professing to cover the remains of one who followed Christ-"An enemy hath done this ?" Taste and Truth are both open to suspicion when they write of another professor

"Fair was thy walk on mortal stage”—

and common sense is outraged by these lines, which prove that if Flattery have not "soothed the dull, cold ear of Death," he has at least heard her blandishments, and turned them to his

"Ye that would know her worth that sleeps below,

Read Virtue's pages through from end to end; t
Leave not a word unmarked, and you will know

The virtues that adorned a valued friend."

We have heard it remarked, that if the dead could but read their own epitaphs, by far the greater number would think they must have got into the wrong graves. It might be so in this case; but unquestionably a vast change is wanted in epitaphial literature.

1

We wish we had as much confidence in the Christianity of our ecclesiologists as we have in their right appreciation of the "æsthetic principle" in matters of this kind. Pity, indeed, it is, that "false doctrine, heresy, and schism" from the apostolic church, should not merely neutralize, but crush the "good thing" in them. Yet looking at those monuments and epitaphs which have now become the "badge of a party," we cannot but rank them far above those of either orthodox churchman or dissenter. A cross-flory that preaches even under cover of its quaint church-text, the thrilling admonition-“ Be ye also ready!" is to our minds a much more fitting memorial than the conventional plain slab, or more pretentious sarcophagus, that gives us only some mangled rhyme or headless and tailless rhapsodyone of Gray's dark "passages that lead to nothing."

But the subject is a solemn one, though our censure is none the less needed on that account. We fear these burying-places reflect but too truly the general mind. Religion is not made the world's business as it should be. It wants depth of earth. We cannot, from our morning's "meditation among the tombs," carry away the impression that England is a Christian country. It is only frosted over with a cold show of Godliness. Men die and are put out of sight, that the living may forget them. Yet we cannot doubt that many who sleep here, sleep in Jesus. To this garden of lilies he comes down, and by the testimony that they pleased God, refreshes that mighty soul which is one day to see of its travail and be satisfied. By his meekness and

+

gentleness we had rather that the passing stranger were besought to think about eternity, but we read no such whispers on the tombs around us. But the "terrors of the Lord" flame out from at least one stone of witness, and by their light we read this thrilling caveat

Delay not sinner till the hour of pain
To seek repentance: Pain is absolute,
Exacting all the body and the brain,
Humanity's stern king from head to foot.

How can'st thou pray, while fevered arrows shoot
Thro' this torn targe-while every bone doth ache,
And the scared mind raves up and down her cell,
Restless and begging rest for mercy's sake?
Add not to Death the bitter fears of hell;
Take pity on thy future self, poor man!
While yet in strength thy timely wisdom can.
Wrestle TO-DAY with sin, and spare that strife
Of meeting all its terrors in the van,
Just at the ebbing agony of life.

REMARKABLE DREAM.

THE following account of a remarkable dream and its literal fulfilment, occurs in "The early Life and Conversion of William Hone," the father of William Hone, who made himself so conspicuous in the political world about thirty years since, but who afterwards became a sincere and humble christian, and in 1834 joined the congregational church assembling at the Weigh House Chapel under the pastorate of the Rev. Thomas Binney.

"Worn down by the day's distress, and having no one to speak to, I went to bed early, and in a dream I saw Price † under the operator's hand at a hair dresser's shop in Berwickstreet. I went in; he looked upon me with carelessness and disdain, but did not speak. I stood behind him till his hair was dressed; he then walked out, and I followed him till he came to the end of Peter-street, when he turned round and said, 'I have strained every nerve and cannot get a farthing for you.' I answered, 'Then I am undone,' and immediately left him. Published in 1841, by Ward and Co.

+ A "trickey" friend to whom he had foolishly lent all his money.

This dream made a strong impression, 'For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose and hide pride from man.'

"I arose early, and told my dream to a person in the house, who advised me to go according to my dream immediately. Without delay I went to the hair dresser's shop in Berwickstreet. I saw Price, as in my dream, having his hair dressed. Without speaking, he looked at me carelessly and disdainfully. I took a standing position behind him, and when he arose, he walked out. I followed him until he came to the end of Peterstreet, where he turned round and said, 'I have strained every nerve and cannot get a farthing for you.' I answered him, Then I am undone,' and went back to my lodgings musing on the literal fulfilment of my dream."

HOW TO PAY FOR A BIBLE.

LAST October I spent a few days in the mountains of Kerry. Before day-break in the morning I started for a long journey. I had to reach Tralee, to meet a car that was to leave at nine o'clock. I travelled over a mountain that lies between Castlemaine and Tralee; and just at the top of the mountain, when it had been clear day for some time, as I was going along with one of the missionaries, a man started before me, and said, "Och! but your riverence is wilcom so airly in the morning." "What, Peter!-what are you doing here?"

"Sure I am doing honestly; I'm paying for the book." He led us to a turf-stack, and behind it were seated six Roman Catholics, away from the eyes of the priest, before their work commenced; and there was Peter teaching them to read the blessed book of God.

But how does this bear on the Tract Society? A missionary lodged for a night with a gentleman in that district. In the morning the gentleman said, "Do you see, sir, the man taking care of the sheep? That is one of the most shrewd men we have in the district." The missionary started towards him