And well-fed sheep and sable oxen slay:
Achilles cover'd with their fat the dead,

And the piled victims round the body spread."

3. Whatever may be our views of death and a future state, our feelings and sensations on the subject are influenced to a very considerable extent by association; and, unfortunately, the associations which we connect with the final resting-place of the departed have too generally been of the most gloomy, and sometimes of the most terrific description:

4.

"The grave! dread thing,

Men shiver when thou'rt named: Nature, appall'd,
Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah! how dark

The long extended realms and rueful wastes,
Where naught but silence reigns, and night, dark night!
The sickly taper,

By glimmering through thy low-brow'd murky vaults,
Furr'd round with misty damps and ropy slime,

Lets fall a supernumerary horror,

And only serves to make thy night more irksome."

5. But are these the feelings with which we should look upon the grave? To use the words of an elegant modern writer Washington Irving "Why should we thus seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and to spread horrors around the tomb of those we love? The grave should be surrounded by every thing that might inspire tenderness and veneration for the dead, or that might win the living to virtue. It is the place, not of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation."

6. Death and the grave are solemn and awful realities; they speak with a powerful and intelligible voice to the heart of every spectator, as being the common lot of all, the gate of access to another state of existence through which all must pass. Our cemeteries, then, should bear a solemn and soothing character; they should have nothing in them savoring of fashionable prettiness, nor any far-fetched conceits or tortured allegories; they should be equally remote, in expression, from fanatical gloom and conceited affectation.

7. There are many of our country church-yards, seated deep in the recesses of venerable woods, and shut out, as it were, from the every-day world, which might furnish us models for imitation, as far as calm serenity and quiet beauty go; where the "rugged elms" and "yew-tree's shade," coupled with the "ivy-mantled tower," with which they are connected, give an air of time-honored sanctity to the scene; where no sound reaches the ear but the low murmur of the wind through the summer leaves, or the sighing of the storm through the wintry branches, realizing, if any situation could do so, the description of the poet:

"There is a calm for those that weep,

A rest for weary pilgrims found;
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground."

8. Of the architectural adaptation of monumental structures to the solemnities and consolations of Christian burial, a writer in the North American Review makes the following excellent observations:

"There is certainly no place, not even the church itself, where it is more desirable that our religion should be present to the mind than the cemetery, which must be regarded either as the end of all things, the last, melancholy, hopeless resort of perishing humanity, the sad and fearful portion of man, which is to involve body and soul alike in endless night; or, on the other hand, as the gateway of a glorious immortality, the passage to a brighter world, whose splendors beam even upon the dark chambers of the tomb.

9. "It is from the very brink of the grave, where rest in eternal sleep the mortal remains of those whom we have best loved, that Christianity speaks to us in its most triumphant soul-exulting words of victory over death, and of a life to come. Surely, then, all that man places over the tomb should, in a measure, speak the same language. The monuments of the burialground should remind us that this is not our final abode; they should, as far as possible, recall to us the consolations and promises of our religion.

10. But there is a style of architecture which belongs peculiarly to Christianity, and owes its existence even to this religion; whose very ornaments remind one of the joys of a life beyond the grave; whose lofty vaults and arches are crowded with the forms of prophets, and martyrs, and beatified spirits, and seem to resound with the choral hymns of angels and archangels. But peculiarly are its power and sublimity displayed in the monuments it rears over the tomb. The elevated form on which reposes the statue of the mailed knight, or the holy woman, composed into the stately rest of the grave, yet the hands folded over the breast, as if commending the spirit to God who gave it; the canopy which overhangs it; the solemn vault which rises above; the gorgeous windows, through which is poured a flood of golden light upon the abode of the dead-these are the characteristics of the architecture of Christianity, the sublime, the glorious Gothic."

LESSON XII. THE ARCHITECTURE OF NATURE.

Within the sunlit forest,

Our roof the bright blue sky,

Where fountains flow, and wild flowers blow,

We lift our hearts on high.-ELLIOTT.

1. HAVING dwelt at some length on the fading monuments of man's power, pride, ambition, and glory, and of his daily life, his religious faith, and his burial, it may be well, in closing, to direct our thoughts, in reverent contemplation, to that higher order of architecture every where seen in Nature's works, and full of expression of the power, wisdom, and goodness of the Great Architect.

2. We might speak of the mountains which He has set up

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as pillars, and of the overhanging dome which seems to rest on their summits; but in vain we should attempt to describe the vast creations of His handiwork which adorn this magnificent outer temple. Within its walls, however, are sanctuaries, which no frail hands have made," and where no traces of" man's pomp or pride" are to be seen, but where the humble worshiper, in all the simplicity of childlike faith, may hold communion with his Maker. These are "the groves""God's first temples"-whose “venerable columns" "thy hand, our Father, reared.”

3.

GOD'S FIRST TEMPLES.

The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learn'd
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them-ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems-in the darkling wood,

Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down
And offer'd to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication. For his simple heart
Might not resist the sacred influences

That, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks that, high in heaven,
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath, that sway'd at once

All their green tops, stole over him, and bow'd
His spirit with the thought of boundless power
And inaccessible majesty. Ah! why

Should we, in the world's riper years, neglect

God's ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn; thrice happy if it find

4.

5.

Acceptance in his ear.

Father, Thy hand

Hath rear'd these venerable columns: Thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down
Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They in Thy sun
Budded, and shook their green leaves in Thy breeze,
And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow,
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died
Among their branches; till at last they stood,
As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,
Fit shrine for humble worshiper to hold
Communion with his Maker.

6.

7.

Encounter; no fantastic carvings show

The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of Thy fair works. But Thou art here; Thou fill'st
The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summits of these trees
In music; Thou art in the cooler breath,
That, from the inmost darkness of the place,
Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh, moist ground, are all instinct with Thee.
Thou hast not left

Thyself without a witness, in these shades,

Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace
Are here to speak of Thee. This mighty oak—
By whose immovable stem I stand, and seem
Almost annihilated-not a prince,

In all the proud old world beyond the deep,
E'er wore his crown as loftily as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves with which
Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root
Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare
Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower,
With scented breath, and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of the upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on
In silence round me-the perpetual work
Of Thy creation, finish'd, yet renew'd
Forever. Written on Thy works, I read
The lesson of Thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die; but see, again,
How, on the faltering footsteps of decay,
Youth presses-ever gay and beautiful youth-
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly than their ancestors
Moulder beneath them.

8.

There have been holy men who hid themselves
Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

9.

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived
The generation born with them, nor seem'd

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them; and there have been holy men
Who deem'd it were not well to pass life thus.

But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and, in Thy presence, reassure
My feeble virtue. Here, its enemies,

The passions, at Thy plainer footsteps, shrink,
And tremble, and are still.

O God! when Thou
Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire

The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill,
With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift, dark whirlwind, that uproots the woods,
And drowns the villages; when, at Thy call,
Uprises the great deep, and throws himself
Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities; who forgets not, at the sight
Of these tremendous tokens of Thy power,
His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by!
Oh! from these sterner aspects of Thy face
Spare me and mine; nor let us need the wrath
Of the mad, unchain'd elements, to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, Thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of Thy works

Learn to conform the order of our lives.-BRYANT.

THE PARTHENON OF ATHENS.

Fair Parthenon! yet still must Fancy weep
For thee, thou work of nobler spirits flown.
Bright, as of old, the sunbeams o'er thee sleep
In all their beauty still-and thine is gone!
Empires have sunk since thou wast first revered,
And varying rites have sanctified thy shrine.
Mourn, graceful ruin! on thy sacred hill,

Thy gods, thy rites, a kindred fate have shared :
Yet art thou honor'd in each fragment still

That wasting years and barbarous hands have spared;

Each hallow'd stone, from rapine's fury borne,

Shall wake bright dreams of thee in ages yet unborn.

HEMANS.

Front Elevation of the Parthenon, as restored. See also p. 285.