must be defined, and well established. The enlightened community must be made sensible that they have an important duty to perform in giving an ample support to a well conducted press., The real grounds of the influence of this organ need to be understood and properly appreciated. The whole civilized world ought to become conscious that they have in their hands an engine, whose right action will ensure a perfectibility in the human condition of which philosophy has as yet hardly dreamed. ARTICLE VIII. MOUNT AUBURN. THE sentence of death began to be fulfilled in the murder of a human being by his brother. Not by disease, nor by casualty, in its first instance, but "by man came death." Man, who was to be the subject of death and its terrors through all his generations, with his own hand brought in the destroyer and taught him by a first example, that his eye should never pity nor his hand spare. As death was in consequence of sin, it was natural and striking that sin rather than disease should have been most nearly concerned in its first entrance to the world. The race were hereby early taught that their transgression was to prove an evil and a bitter thing, while they saw the rapidity with which sin proceeds from small beginnings to the perpetration of monstrous crimes. There is reason to believe that the feelings in Cain's heart which at length impelled him to the murder of Abel, were excited in him by a rejection of the atonement. Abel brought unto the Lord the firstlings of his flock; Cain, the produce of the ground. "But without the shedding of blood there is no remission." The early use of bloody sacrifice shows that the appointment and office of the Lamb of God were understood; and the rebuke upon Cain shows that his sin consisted in refusing to bring a typical offering. “And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if not, a sinoffering lieth at the door." He would not bring a sin-offering; while he was willing to offer that which as a husbandman he could bring without much effort, he did not feel such reverence for the appointment of God, or such conviction of his need of expiatory sacrifice, as would have led him to offer a lamb. His heart was too proud to bear the softening effect of an innocent creature bleeding and dying to show forth his desert as a sinner, and teaching him that his lofty soul must consent to be saved, if at all, by a vicarious sacrifice. In this state of mind he could neither bear the gentle remonstrance of Abel, nor look upon his accepted altar but with malignant feelings; and murder followed. Cain was a Deist; for he "believed not the record which God gave" in Paradise "of his Son." If this be true, it is to be remembered that the first entrance of death was in connection with a rejection of the Saviour. The hand of unbelief opened the dark valley, and unbelief has continued to fill its gloomy passage with spirits without hope. Since the death of Abel, millions have passed into eternity. "The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox?" The earth is supposed to change its inhabitants once in thirty-three years; that is, within that length of time, reckoning from any point, there will be as many deaths as there were people upon the earth when the thirty-three years began. Whole generations have passed from the earth into silence. Of millions that have reigned or served, rejoiced or wept, the great, the ignoble, the proud, the wise, no trace is to be found, and the places which knew them, know them no more. "All these are passed away like a shadow, and as a post that hasteth by; and as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves; or like as when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through; even so they as soon as they were born began to draw to their end."+ * Sir T. Browne, Hydriotaphia, Preface. It is a natural feeling which leads us to fix a visible memorial of a departed friend at the spot where we saw him return to the earth;-just as we fixed the place in our sight and mind where, when living and at a temporary separation, he disappeared from our view. Therefore a mound is raised upon his bed, and the tall or humble monument impersonates his form to our minds, and re-unites his separated being. Affection for the dead, expressed by a care for the resting places of their bodies, existed in great simplicity and beauty amongst the Jewish patriarchs. One of the most touching passages of sacred history is that which describes Abraham's purchase of a burying-place for Sarah, of Ephron the Hittite. The aged and venerable mourner stood up from before his dead and asked of the sons of Heth, with whom he was a sojourner, a place for Sarah's grave. No one can read without emotion the words that followed-the generous offer of the men of the land, the respectful and courteous reply of the patriarch, or observe the honorable pride and delicacy which forbade his taking a sepulchre for his wife that cost him nothing, his selection, at their request, of a favorite spot, and his refusal to bury his dead till he had weighed the silver. The simple description of the spot shows that it was a cave in a grove, which was itself shut in by a border of trees. This became the family tomb of the patriarchs. Jacob, when dying, was anxious to secure a resting place in this sepulchre, and gave, as a reason, to his sons, "There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife, there they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah." Of all the burying-places and sepulchres for the dead, there is no one to be compared to the sea. Such multitudes are gathered together there, that in the apostle's vision of the resurrection, one of its scenes could not fail to be this: "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it." The sea is the burying-place of the old world; to them have been added thousands from the new, out of every clime and generation. The loss of a friend at sea, occasions peculiar affliction, not only because of the separation from the sympathy and care of friends in the trying hour, but because the imagination is left to picture distressing events attending the death and burial;-the slowly sinking form, the ship that had paused to leave it in the deep, sailing on; the under currents taking it into their restless courses, till perhaps it is brought to the shores of its own home, or cast upon the rocks of a foreign land, or upon some lone island, or sunk to rest to the bottom of the deep, "with the earth and her bars about it forever." At the family tomb and the frequented grave, sorrow can make a definite complaint; but to weep through sleepless nights when the storm carries the accustomed thoughts to the sea, which had long detained the expected friend, and now is known to have his form somewhere in its unrelenting holds, is affliction that receives new poignancy each time that the excited imagination presents a new image of distress or terror. But could we divest our selves of the natural disposition to dwell upon the sad associations of such a burial, we might feel that there is much attending it to awaken sublime and pious emotions. No remains seem to be so peculiarly in the care of God, as those of one that is buried in the sea. The fact that " no man knoweth of his sepulchre," leads the thoughts directly to God as the guardian of the dead, and makes us feel that as He only knew his lying down, He has taken him into his peculiar protection. "The sea is His;" its graves are all before him, and the forms which sleep there are as safe for the resurrection, as any that repose in the monumental tomb. All nations have ever had a strong attachment to some peculiar method of disposing of their dead. The origin of many customs relating to funeral rites, may be found in some religious or philosophical sentiment. The ancient Greeks believed that the soul's original element was fire; and burning was with them a coveted honor. They regarded water burial, of course, as annihilation; hence Diomede, in revenge of the death of Thersites, whom Achilles slew for ridiculing his sorrow over Penthesilia, the Amazonian queen, dragged her body out of the camp, and threw it into the Scamander. Many of the ancient European nations practised burning; the Danes, Norwegians, Gauls, as also the Getæ and Thracians; some of the most warlike doing it perhaps to save their bodies from the malice of their enemies, as well as in the belief of the purifying nature of fire, and its preparation of them for etherial happiness. The Egyptians, who of all nations seemed to strive the most after terrestrial immortality, as their mausoleums and pyramids teach us, contended against the dissolution of the body by the art of embalming. This desire for the perpetuity of their remains, led them to dread funereal burning, and therefore when Cambyses had inflicted every indignity upon Amasis, the Egyptian king, he satisfied his revenge by giving him up to the fire. The nations that worshipped fire, such as the Chaldeans and Persians, considered the burning of a dead body as a desecration of their sacred element. The Icthyophagi, an Ethiopian people, so called from their subsisting upon fish, having their existence as they supposed, and certainly their means of subsistence, from the sea, made the sea their place of burial. The Scythians chose the air as their burying place. Some nations, anxious only for the preservation of the bones, expose their dead to the dogs and vultures. The practice in Christendom of the burial in the earth of the entire body, is most in accordance with the will and sentence of God:-" For out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." The common burial places, which at short intervals every where arrest the eye of the traveller in this part of the country, are rude and irregular. The occasional presence of a white marble stone, amongst the prevailing head stones of grey and moss grown slate, only shows more distinctly the negligence and poverty of the place. There is the same appearance of confusion and ruin amongst the graves as we fancy when the Psalmist says, "Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth." The arrangement of the graves seems to have been left with the grave-digger, who appears to have had Job's description of Hades in his mind, and to have purposely made his little domain in correspondence with it, "A land without order." When grief has in a measure subsided, and the surviving relative could with composure attend to the permanent resting place of the body, the place where it was laid has become sanctified, and a removal except as a matter of necessity, is ungrateful to the mind. Hence, "as the tree falleth so it lies," and the sequestered field presents a rough, uncomely sight; but the chastened feeling of awe, and the involuntary disposition to silence, which the place occasions, prevents the expression and almost the feeling of dissatisfaction at the want of taste which in different circumstances would not be seen without reproof. grave-yard seems as natural as for dishevelled; the contrary seems like and a studied sorrow. Want of order in a violent grief to be composed mourning |