now widening in its course to the plain; and in an hour of pensive silence, or pleasant talk, we found ourselves entering, in a closer body, the little gateway of the churchyard. To the tolling of the bell we moved across the green mounds, and arranged ourselves, according to the plan and order which our feelings suggested, around the bier and its natural supporters. There was no delay. In a few minutes the Elder was laid among the mould of his forefathers, in their long-ago chosen spot of rest. One by one the people dropped away, and none were left by the new-made grave but the son and his little boy, the pastor and myself. As yet nothing was said, and in that pause I looked around me, over the sweet burial ground.

Each tombstone and grave, over which I had often walked in boyhood, arose in my memory as I looked steadfastly upon their long-forgotten inscriptions; and many had since then been erected. The whole character of the place was still simple and unostentatious; but, from the abodes of the dead, I could see that there had been an improvement in the condition of the living. There was a taste visible in their decorations, not without much of native feeling, and, occasionally, something even of native grace. If there was any other inscription than the name and age of the poor inhabitants below, it was, in general, some short text of Scripture; for it is most pleasant and soothing to the pious mind, when bereaved of friends, to commemorate them on earth by some touching expression taken from that Book, which reveals to them a life in heaven.

There is a sort of gradation, a scale of forgetfulness, in a country churchyard, where the processes of nature are suffered to go on over the green place of burial; that is extremely affecting in the contemplation. The soul goes, from the grave just covered up to that which seems scarcely joined together, on and on to those folded and bound by the undisturbed verdure of many, many unremembered years. It then glides at last into nooks and corners where the ground seems perfectly calm and waveless, utter oblivion having smoothed the earth over the long mouldered bones. Tombstones, on which the inscriptions are hidden in green obliteration, or that are mouldering, or falling to a side, are close to others which last week were brushed by the chisel: constant renovation and constant decay, vain attempts to adhere to memory, and oblivion now baffled, and now triumphant, smiling among all the memorials of human affec tion, as they keep continually crumbling away into the world of undistinguishable dust and ashes.

The churchyard, to the inhabitants of a rural parish, is the place to which, as they grow older, all their thoughts and feelings turn. The young take a look of it every Sabbath-day, not always perhaps a careless look, but carry away from it, unconsciously, many salutary impressions. What is more pleasant than the meeting of a rural congregation in the churchyard before the minister appears? What is there to shudder at in lying down, sooner or later, in such a peaceful and sacred place, to be spoken of frequently on Sabbath among the groups of which we used to be one, and our low burial-spot to be visited, at such times, as long as there remains on earth any one to whom our face was dear! To those who mix in the strife and dangers of the world, the place is felt to be uncertain wherein they may finally lie at rest. The soldier, the sailor, the traveler, can only see some dim grave dug for him, when he dies, in some place obscure, nameless, and unfixed to imagination. All he feels is, that his burial will be, on earth or in the sea. But the peaceful dwellers, who cultivate their paternal acres, or tilling at least the same small spot of soil, shift only from a cottage on the hillside to one on the plain, still within the bounds of one quiet parish; they look to lay their bones, at last, in the burial place of the kirk in which they were baptized, and with them it almost literally is but a step from the cradle to the grave.

Such were the thoughts that calmly followed each other in my revery, as I stood beside the Elder's grave, and the trodden grass was again lifting up its blades from the pressure of many feet, now all but a few departed. What a simple burial had it been! Dust was consigned to dust; no more. Bare, naked, simple, and austere is, in Scotland, the service of the grave. It is left to the soul itself to consecrate, by its passion, the mould over which tears, but no words are poured. Surely there is a beauty in this; for the heart is left unto its own sorrow, according as it is a friend, a brother, a parent, or a child, that is covered up from our eyes. Yet call not other rites, however different from this, less beautiful or pathetic. For willingly does the soul connect its grief with any consecrated ritual of the dead. Sound or silence, music, hymns, psalms, sable garments, or raiment white as snow, all become holy symbols of the soul's affection; nor is it for any man to say which is the most natural, which is the best of the thousand shows, and expressions, and testimonies of sorrow, resignation and love, by which mortal beings would seek to express their souls, when one of their brethren has returned to his parent dust.

My mind was recalled from all these sad, yet not unpleasant fancies by a deep groan, and I beheld the Elder's son fling himself down upon the grave, and kiss it passionately, imploring pardon from God. "I distressed my father's heart in his old age; I repented, and received thy forgiveness even on thy death-bed! But how may I be assured that God will forgive me for having so sinned against my old, gray-headed father, when his limbs were weak and his eyesight dim!" The old minister stood at the head of the grave, without speaking a word, with his solemn and pitiful eyes fixed upon the prostrate and contrite man. His sin had been great, and tears that till now had, on this day at least, been compressed within his heart by the presence of so many of his friends, now poured down upon the sod as if they would have found their way to the very body of his father. Neither of us offered to lift him up, for we felt awed by the rueful passion of his love, his remorse and his penitence; and nature, we felt, ought to have her way. "Fear not, my son," at length said the old man, in a gentle voice, "fear not, my son, but that you are already forgiven. Dost thou not feel pardon within thy contrite spirit?" He rose up from his knees with a faint smile, while the minister with his white head yet uncovered, held his hands over him as in benediction; and that beautiful and loving child, who had been standing in a fit of weeping terror at his father's agony, now came up to him, and kissed his cheek; holding in his little hand a few faded primroses, which he had unconsciously gathered together as they lay on the turf of his grandfather's grave.

PALESTINE.-JOHN G. WHITTIER.

Blest land of Judea! thrice hallow'd of song,
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.

With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have linger'd before:
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels of God.

Blue sea of the hills!-in my spirit I hear
Thy waters, Gennesaret, chime on my ear;

Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down,
And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown.

Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green,
And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene;
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see
The gleam of thy waters, O, dark Galilee!

Hark, a sound in the valley! where, swollen and strong,
Thy river, O, Kishon, is sweeping along;

Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain,
And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain.

There, down from his mountains stern Zebulon came,
And Naphtali's stag, with his eyeballs of flame,
And the chariots of Jabin roll'd harmlessly on,
For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's son!

There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which rang
To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang,
When the princes of Issachar stood by her side,
And the shout of a host in its triumph replied.

Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen,

With the mountains around and the valleys between;
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there
The song of the angels rose sweet on the air.

And Bethany's palm-trees in beauty still throw
Their shadows at noon on the ruins below;
But where are the sisters who hasten'd to greet
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at his feet?

I tread where the twelve in their wayfaring trod;

I stand where they stood with the chosen of God-
Where His blessings were heard and His lessons were taught
Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought.

O, here with His flock the sad Wanderer came

These hills He toil'd over in grief, are the same

The founts where He drank by the way-side still flow,
And the same airs are blowing which breath'd on his brow

And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet,

But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her feet;
For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone,
And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone.

But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode
Of humanity clothed in the brightness of God?
Were my spirit but tuned from the outward and dim,
It could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him!

Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when,
In love and in meekness, He moved among men ;

And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of the sea, In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me!

And what if my feet may not tread where He stood,
Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood,
Nor my eyes see the cross which He bow'd Him to bear,
Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer.

Yet, loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near
To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here;
And the voice of thy love is the same even now,
As at Bethany's tomb, or on Olivet's brow.

O, the outward hath gone!-but, in glory and power,
The Spirit surviveth the things of an hour;
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame
On the heart's secret altar is burning the same!

THE SEA MONARCH.-T. BUCHANAN READ.

A monarch reigned beneath the sea

On the wreck of a myriad thrones

The collected ruins of Tyranny

Shattered by the hand of Destiny,
And scattered abroad with maniac glee,
Like a gibbeted pirate's bones.

Alone, supreme, he reigned apart,

On the throne of a myriad thrones-
Where sitting close to the world's red heart,
Which pulsed swift heat through his ocean mart,
He could hear each heavy throe and start,
As she heaved her earthquake groans.

He gazed through the shadowy deep which shields
His throne of a myriad thrones-

And saw the many variant keels

Driving over the watery fields,

Some with thunderous and flashing wheels
Linking the remotest zones.

Oft, like an eagle that swoops in air,
He saw from his throne of thrones,
The winged anchors with eager stare
Leap midway down to the ocean's lair-
While hanging plummets gazed in despair

At the unreached sands and stones!