would-be pathetic upon infants here abouts. "Dear prattling babe, to both our hearts still dear, Long shall we bathe thy memory with a tear! Farewell! too promising on earth to dwell! Sweetest of fondlings! best of babes! farewell." How people manage to bathe me mories, I do not well understand; and as for the third line, it reminds me so irresistibly of Mrs Kenwigs, and her" too beautiful, much too beautiful" offspring, that if I am, by such reminiscence, blinded to any real beauty in the composition, the shoulders of Boz must be content to bear at least a moiety of the blame. This is just the sort of composition which is bad enough to provoke criticism, without being, at the same time, sufficient ly unassuming to disarm it. pithy couplet Here lie I and my two daughters. The The devil take the Cheltenham waters!" or the still more concise and laconic distich "Here I lays, Kill'd by a chaise," are infinitely better in this respect. Pride of my parents' hearts, Now, in this there is certainly no rhyme, and for it there is as certainly no reason. Somewhere hereabouts too, four lines, from one of the noblest passages that ever flowed from the pen of Walter Scott, have been pressed into the service, without, as far as I can discover, any very material improvement. "Genius, and taste, and talent gone, For ever tomb'd beneath the stone, Where, taming thought to parents' pride, Our lovely babes sleep side by side"the younger of the said "babes" having died at the age of eleven, and the elder at sixteen ! But a truce for a few moments with the bards of the gravestone, while I stop to read who owns this massive mausoleum, which towers unapproached in hugeness above the surrounding tombs of ordinary mortals. "The Family Grave of James Morison the Hygeist." What! and were pills in vain? "Throw physic to the dogs! I'll none of it!" Well, peace be with him! He had in life many brethren, and even here in death he is not without the company of one congenial corpse. In the central plot of the cemetery, among the more aristocrati cal dead, on a large tomb, surmount<< ed by a figure standing beneath a dome supported by pillars, is engraved a longish and not ill-written inscription, concluding thus— "Stranger, as you respect the receptacle for the dead, (As one of the many that will rest here,) [quære there?] Read the name of John St John Long Without comment.' Perhaps I am over-fastidious-but many of the tombs here are too pretty to please my taste. I like to see a grave kept with neatness and simplicity; the turf cannot be too green, the weeds cannot be too carefully removed; but, were I constituted censor of such matters, I am inclined to think I should publish an edict against any thing beyond. There are several graves here which are positive gardenplots, with the mould carefully raked and watered, and little painted wooden or iron trellis-work running round the edges, paling in roses, and violets, and hearts-ease, and fifty other small flowers, which have in them no touch the surviving relatives really did come of sadness. One would fancy that there, as somebody has in a most Juvenal-like line expressed it, to "botanize upon their mother's grave." This is adopting the affectation, as well as the utility, of the foreign cemeterial system. Were it not for the sake of the burial-service, these floricultural mourners might as well have buried their dead in their own summer-bowers, or in the borders beneath their own parlour windows. But these are not the only specimens of amateur grave-making, if I may so call it, to be found here. There is one thingfor monument it is not-composed of literally nothing but wire trellis-work, and in shape and structure for all the world like a huge and extremely elaborate bird-cage; or still more, perhaps, like one of those magnificent barley-sugar pavilions, which stand in pastry cooks' shop windows to make the eyes and mouths of little boys and girls of all descriptions stare, and gape, and water, for wonderment. The good, honest, solid gravestones round about ought to rise en masse, and vent "The loss of an aunt I mourn; A dear and affectionate friend: To me she will never return, To her I hope to ascend. Her love that of aunts surpass'd ! ! !” &c. &c. &c. to the end of three stanzas! But to quote all the absurd unmeaning inscriptions that occur in this place, would exhaust far too much pen, ink, paper, and patience. Mrs Malaprop herself could not fail to be delighted with the "nice derangement of epitaphs" to be met with. I must, however, find room for two more "Though rolling sun and moon smile on this stone, Which marks the spot of one whose virtues shone, Let wafting breezes forth this tribute send, He was the Brother, Husband, Father, Friend." Taking it for granted that the sun does "May no wolf howl, no screech-owl stir Thy soft sweet earth (?) but, like a spring, Why, the very whisper of such a thing as a wolf, in this our nineteenth century, running about at midnight, NO. CCCII. VOL. XLVIII. and howling," as Rosalind says, "against the moon" at Kensall Green, in the county of Middlesex, is enough to scare away in an opposite direction every funeral within twenty miles of the spot. The good people of the cemetery must have been either dozing, or standing aghast at some railway massacre close by, when they suffered to be erected an inscription so insidiously inimical to their speculation. To be serious-it is not a pleasant thing to visit the grave of a friend or a kinsman, and find a stranger laughing over his tombstone; still less pleasant is it to be one's-self the laugher under such circumstances; fail sometimes to take place, when but it is a rencontre which can hardly such absurdities, in the way of epied; and it is one at which the mourner, taphs, are daily and hourly perpetratpained though he may be, has at any rate but small reason to wonder. There are five or six strains "in a higher mood" scattered about the grounds, but scarcely enough elevated to deserve quotation. The conclud. ing line (whether original or borrowed, I know not) of one on a young girl, carried off by a lingering consumption "In smiles she sunk her grief, to lessen ours struck me as being happily expressed. The "west end" of this Necropolis is, as an Irishman would say, in the middle, where the tombs stand more dispersedly among the evergreens than in the other parts of the ground, and present, therefore, a far more picturesque appearance to the eye. Among these are two or three handsome coroneted monuments, besides several covering the remains of officers of rank, and various well-known public characters. I believe many of the aristocracy lie in the catacombs below, but I did not descend into these. Vis-a-vis to the monument of St John Long, before noticed, stands the family tomb of no less a personage than Andrew Ducrow, of amphitheatrical notoriety-to my thinking a structure in very vile taste; but, while I was contemplating it, there came up a couple of rather dingy individuals, presenting the appearance of journeymen tailors out for a holyday, the one of whom remarked to the other, as he passed, "Well! I'm blessed if this 3 G on. ain't the best tomb here, after all; and, as his companion replied by an acquiescent grunt, my opinion on the matter must not be implicitly relied It is a square massive piece of workmanship, garnished with a begging dog, in bronze, on either side the entrance, with Egyptian columns, sphinges, urns, and flowerpots, all of the same hue; and some angels with wreaths, and some horses with wings in relievo; the last-mentioned animals being (the wings always excepted) the only ornament for which I could perceive any reason. The only present occupant of the interior is the late Mrs Ducrow, whose worth is commemorated in an ungrammatical and particularly ill-written inscription. For the "horse-taming Andrew" himself, long may it be ere the ring at Astley's knows him no more; for most assuredly, till the end of time, "Within that circle none shall ride as he." There is a tomb, not far removed from this, which few will pass without a sigh. It bears no laboured eulogy; but, to the great majority of those whose sorrows and sympathies are worth the waking, it tells an ample tale. Its simple inscription is ANNE SCOTT, of Abbotsford, Baronet, In her 31st year. Somewhere here, too, stands, above the grave of one untimely cut off, a handsome broken column, (of which, by the way, there are several in the cemetery,) but it wastes its poetry sadly. I heard a respectable-looking man and woman gravely deploring its maimed condition, and innocently speculating whether the misfortune arose from mischief or high winds. I noticed but one tomb in the place of which one would say, at a glance, "That grave must be a Frenchman's." It is that of poor Pelissié the comedian. It is, of course, much decorated, and overgrown with flowers and shrubs, or three and has, moreover, two wreaths of those common, small, dried, yellow flowers, whose name I forget, in a little glass case, such as is usually dedicated to a stuffed canary-bird, affixed to the headstone. The first part of the inscription is neat :-" He was among the first who endeavoured to naturalize Molière in the country of Shakspeare." The last sentence sounds, in English ears, somewhat strangely :-" This stone would be soon worn away (usée), if every one whom he has delighted were to visit this spot, to kneel on it (s'agenouiller), and to pray for him." It is by no means the least striking feature of this cemetery, that it is closely neighboured on either side by one of those gigantic achievements of modern science-a railway. Singular enough it is, to stand on the terrace of the little chapel, and contrast an approaching funeral procession-"the steps of the mourners heavy and slow" the laboured progress of the plumed hearse, with the momentary meteor-like glimpse of a passing train; the oppressive stillness and silence of death, with the noise, and the hurry, and the whirl of life; and to think that the most impatient traveller of all those who shot by not a moment ago, must erelong be content to journey at the snail-like pace of the melancholy pageant before us. If the Kensall Green cemetery sends us home pondering well on these things, it will have preached a homily on mortality beyond the pulpit-a homily, more. over, of which we happily cannot lose the spirit, by setting ourselves to work after the most approved modern fashion to criticise the language. THE NON-INTRUSION QUESTION. THE Church Question in Scotland has never yet been put upon its right footing before the people of England. It has been enveloped in a cloud of local details, or foreign law; and our Southern readers, horrified at the sight of presbyteries, synods, non-intrusion meetings, Acts of the General Assembly and its Commission, decisions of the Court of Session, Acts of the Scottish Parliament, and judgments of the House of Peers, have almost universally turned away in despair from all attempts on the part of their Scottish brethren to enlighten them as to what was going on on the other side of the Tweed. We are not surprised at this indifference, any more than we are at the intense interest in which it is regarded by all classes of the Scottish people. The English disregard it, because they cannot perceive the bearings of the question at issue through the mist of technicalities, localities, and foreign interests in which it is enveloped. The Scotch watch it with anxiety; because they are well aware, that beneath this uninviting crust the fires of the revolutionary volcano are burning. We propose, in the present article, shortly, and in intelligible language, to explain the bearings of this important question to our Southern readers; to show with what perilous consequences, alike to Church and State, and the ultimate interests of the neglected poor, it is in reality fraught; and what serious consequences will, in all likelihood, ensue, both to the civil and ecclesiastical establishments of all parts of the empire, if the good sense and weight of England does not come to assist the intelligence and property of Scotland in the contest with revolutionary violence and religious fanaticism in which they are now engaged. The contest between the fanatical or Non-intrusion party of the Scottish Church, as they style themselves, is the same at bottom with that in which Henry II. was so long engaged with the Church of Rome, and for which Thomas à-Becket was slain on the steps of the high altar of Canterbury cathedral. It is an effort on the part of this section of the Church, and their impassioned adherents among the people, to wrest the right of pa tronage from all the patrons in the kingdom who at present enjoy it. The Church revolutionists are at variance as to the parties in whom the right of nomination should be vested when the present patrons are dispossessed. The more moderate among them, of whom Mr Colquhoun of Killermont may be reckoned as the leader, are inclined to vest the nomination in the heritors and kirk-sessions; that is, as the English would say, in the landed proprietors and churchwardens of the parish. Others are inclined to go a step further, and propose to vest it in all those communicating with the Kirk; that is to say, in all the parishioners who are in the habit of attending the sacrament. Others, again, who go the whole hog, are clear that nothing will do but vesting it at once in the universal suffrage of the whole males in the parish above twenty-one years of age. Thus, though the revolutionary band are by no means at one as to their ulterior proceedings, and the evident seeds of future discord are sown among them, yet they are perfectly agreed on one point; viz. spoliation of the patrons. They are split into many divisions about the division of the spoil, but perfectly at one as to the act of robbery. We are well aware that these are hard words; more especially when applied to a body of men who embrace among their ranks many worthy of the highest admiration for their piety, their virtue, and their achievements in the cause of humanity. But when we come to political questions, and to the conduct of men in public life, we must judge of them by their actions, and by the tendency which the sures they advocate, have upon the rights and interests of the social body. Judging by this standard, we can see no difference whatever between the measures advocated by the Scotch Non-intrusionists, and those which were supported by the French Jacobins, and which are now contended for by the Chartists of England. mea Our reasons for this strong opinion are twofold; first, that the church Non-intrusionists propose to spoliate the patrons of their property without any indemnification; and secondly, that they propose to effect this, not by act of parliament, but by a general and obstinate resistance to the law. During the troubled and agitated times which succeeded to the restoration of Charles II., when the govern ment was indefatigable in its efforts to re-establish episcopacy in the northern end of the island, and they were resisted by the firm spirit and patriotic self-denial of the Scottish Covenanters, the attention of all parties in the kingdom was forcibly drawn to the extreme inconvenience of maintaining, in opposition to the wishes of the people throughout a considerable portion of the kingdom, the rights of the patrons to present the clergy, as then by law established. On the other hand, it forcibly struck even the patriot leaders of those days, that it would be altogether unjust to deprive the patrons of the rights which they had in great part purchased for full value, and on the strength of which debt had been contracted, and marriages and other onerous contracts formed, without some adequate compensation. These opposite and conflicting considerations led, after the Revolution in 1688, to the act of the Scottish Parliament of 1690, chap. 23, which provided a remedy for all the parishes that chose to avail themselves of it, while, at the same time, it secured adequate compensation to the patrons who were to be dispossessed. We here, for the sake of brevity, transcribe the abstract of this act, from the Scotch acts, and recommend the study of the passage to our readers, as drawing the distinction between the ancient Whigs of the Revolution, and the modern revolutionary Whigs. "Our sovereign lord and lady, the King and Queen's Majesties, considering that the power of presenting ministers to vacant churches, of late exercised by patrons, hath been greatly abused, and is inconvenient to be continued in this realm; do, therefore, with the advice and consent of the estates of Parliament, hereby discharge, cass, annul, and make void, the foresaid power heretofore exercised by any patron of presenting ministers to any kirk now vacant, or that shall hereafter happen to be vaick within this kingdom, with all exercise of the said power." By the act it is declared, "in lieu and recompense of the said right of presentation hereby taken away, their Majesties, with advice and consent foresaid, hereby statute and ordain the heretors and liferenters of each paroch, and the towncouncils for the burgh, to pay to the said patrons betwixt and Martinmas next, the sum of six hundred merks, proportionally, effeiring to their valued rents in the said paroch; viz. two parts by the heretors, and a third part by the liferenters, deducting always the patron's own part, effeiring to his proportion as an heritor: and that upon the said patron, his granting a sufficient and formal renunciation of the said right of presentation in favour of the said heritors, town-councils for the burghs, and kirk-session. And it is hereby declared, that as to the paroches to which their Majesties have right to present, upon payment of the six hundred merks to the clerks of the thesaury, their Majesties shall be fully denuded of their right of presentation to that paroch." It is further declared, "That the right of the teinds of the said paroches which are not heretably disponed, shall, by vertue of this present act, belong to the said patrons, with the burden always of the ministers' stipends, tack, and prorogations already granted of the said teinds, and of such augmentations of stipend, future prorogations and erections of new kirks as shall be found just and expedient, providing the saids patrons getting right to the teinds by vertue of this present act, and who had no right thereto before shall be, likeas they are hereby obliged to sell to each heretor, the tiends of his own lands, at the rate of six years' purchase, as the same shall be valued by a commission for valuation of tiends." It is only necessary to add, that the right of patronage was re-established by the 10th of Queen Anne, chap. 11., and we have done with the whole technicalities of the Scotch law. Now, observe the difference between the Whigs of the Revolution and the revolutionary Whigs. The former, in consequence of the then disagreement between the patrons and the people, took away from the patrons their right of patronage; but then they gave them in return, at the expense of the heritors of the parish taking the benefit of the Act, an indemnification, which, although now inconsiderable from the change in the value of mo |