A rural Cemetery seems to combine in itself all the advantages which can be proposed to gratify human feelings, or tranquillize human fears; to secure the best religious influences, and to cherish all those associations which cast a cheerful light over the darkness of the grave.
And what spot can be more appropriate than this, for such a purpose? Nature seems to point it out with significant energy, as the favorite retirement of the dead. There are around us all the varied features of her beauty and grandeur — the forest-crowned heights; the abrupt acclivity; the sheltered valley; the deep glen; the glassy glade; and the silent grove. Here are the lofty oak, the beach, that “wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,” the rustling pine, and the drooping willow;--the tree, that sheds its pale leaves with every autumn, a fit emblem of our own transitory bloom; and the evergreen, with its perennial shoots, instructing us that “the wintery blast of death kills not the buds of virtue.” Here is the thick shrubbery to protect and conceal the new-made grave; and there is the wild-flower creeping along the narrow path, and planting its seeds in the upturned earth. All around us there breathes a solemn calm, as if we were in the bosom of a wilderness, broken only by the breeze as it murmurs through the tops of the forest, or by the notes of the warbler pouring forth his matin or his evening song.
Ascend but a few steps, and what a change of scenery to surprise and delight us. We seem, as it were in an instant, to pass from the confines of death to the bright and balmy regions of life. Below us flows the winding Charles with its rippling current, like the stream of time hastening to the ocean of eternity. In the distance,
