A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is wont to take possession of me alike in spring and in autumn. But in spring it is the melancholy of hope: in autumn it is the melancholy of resignation. As I was journeying on foot through the Apennines, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the spring and the autumn and the melancholy of both seemed to have combined. In his discourse there were the freshness and the colours of April:
"Qual ramicel a ramo,Tal da pensier pensieroIn lui germogliava."
But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both of age and of the late season, in the stately elm, after the clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried withies around its trunk and branches. Even so there was a memory on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still looked—I know not, whether upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of meeting where the sky rests upon the distance. But how may I express—the breathed tarnish, shall I name it?—on the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes? Yet had it not a sort of strange accordance with their slow and reluctant movement, whenever he turned them to any object on the right hand or on the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It was at once the melancholy of hope and of resignation.
We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sudden tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek protection in the vaulted doorway of a lone chapelry: and we sat face to face, each on the stone bench alongside the low, weather-stained wall, and as close as possible to the massy door.
After a pause of silence: "Even thus," said he, "like two strangers that have fled to the same shelter from the same storm, not seldom do despair and hope meet for the first time in the porch of death!" "All extremes meet," I answered; "but yours was a strange and visionary thought." "The better then doth it beseem both the place and me," he replied. "From a visionary wilt thou hear a vision? Mark that vivid flash through this torrent of rain! Fire and water. Even here thy adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of my vision." I entreated him to proceed. Sloping his face toward the arch and yet averting his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words: till listening to the wind that echoed within the hollow edifice, and to the rain without,
"Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound,The clash hard by and the murmur all round,"
he gradually sank away, alike from me and from his own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm and in the duskiness of that place he sat like an emblem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like an aged mourner on the sodded grave of an only one, who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. Starting at length from his brief trance of abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed his discourse, and commenced his parable:
"During one of those short furloughs from the service of the body, which the soul may sometimes obtain even in this, its militant state, I found myself in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing diversity of soils: and here was a sunny spot, and there a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and shade as we may have observed on the mountain's side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds are scattered over heaven. Almost in the very entrance of the valley stood a large and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colours, some horrible tale or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, untinged by the medium through which it passed. The body of the building was full of people, some of them dancing in and out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Intermingled with these, I observed a number of men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared now to marshal the various groups and to direct their movements; and now, with menacing countenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same time an immense cage, and the form of a human Colossus.
"I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things might mean; when lo! one of the directors came up to me, and with a stern and reproachful look bade me uncover my head; for that the place, into which I had entered, was the temple of the only true religion, in the holier recesses of which the great goddess personally resided. Himself too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated minister of her rites. Awe-struck by the name of religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly and earnestly intreated him to conduct me into her presence. He assented. Offerings he took from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations he exorcised me; and then led me through many a dark and winding alley, the dew-damps of which chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my feet, mingled, methought, with moanings, affrighted me. At length we entered a large hall where not even a single lamp glimmered. It was made half visible by the wan phosphoric rays which proceeded from inscriptions on the walls, in letters of the same pale and sepulchral light. I could read them, methought; but though each one of the words taken separately I seemed to understand, yet when I took them in sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible. As I stood meditating on these hard sayings, my guide thus addressed me: 'The fallible becomes infallible, and the infallible remains fallible. Read and believe: these are mysteries!' In the middle of the vast hall the goddess was placed. Her features, blended with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet vacant. No definite thought, no distinct image was afforded me: all was uneasy and obscure feeling. I prostrated myself before her, and then retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wondering, and dissatisfied.
"As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard a deep buzz as of discontent. A few whose eyes were bright, and either piercing or steady, and whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, ridge-like, above the eyebrows, bespoke observation followed by meditative thought, and a much larger number who were enraged by the severity and insolence of the priests in exacting their offerings, had collected in one tumultuous group, and with a confused outcry of 'This is the Temple of Superstition!' after much contumely, and turmoil, and cruel mal-treatment on all sides, rushed out of the pile: and I, methought, joined them.
"We speeded from the temple with hasty steps, and had now nearly gone round half the valley, when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond the stature of mortals, and with a something more than human in her countenance and mien, which yet could by mortals be only felt, not conveyed by words or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection, animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in them; and hope, without its uncertainty, and a something more than all these, which I understood not; but which yet seemed to blend all these into a divine unity of expression. Her garments were white and matronly, and of the simplest texture. We inquired her name. My name, she replied, is Religion.
"The more numerous part of our company, affrighted by the very sound, and sore from recent impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards and examined no farther. A few of us, struck by the manifest opposition of her form and manner to those of the living Idol, whom we had so recently abjured, agreed to follow her, though with cautious circumspection. She led us to an eminence in the midst of the valley, from the top of which we could command the whole plain, and observe the relation of the different parts, of each to the other, and of each to the whole, and of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass which assisted without contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to see far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life; though our eye even thus assisted permitted us only to behold a light and a glory, but what we could not descry, save only that itwas, and that it was most glorious.
"And now, with the rapid transition of a dream, I had overtaken and rejoined the more numerous party, who had abruptly left us, indignant at the very name of religion. They journeyed on, goading each other with remembrances of past oppressions, and never looking back, till in the eagerness to recede from the Temple of Superstition they had rounded the whole circle of the valley. And lo! there faced us the mouth of a vast cavern, at the base of a lofty and almost perpendicular rock, the interior side of which, unknown to them, and unsuspected, formed the extreme and backward wall of the temple. An impatient crowd, we entered the vast and dusky cave, which was the only perforation of the precipice. At the mouth of the cave sat two figures; the first, by her dress and gestures, I knew to be Sensuality; the second form, from the fierceness of his demeanour, and the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared himself to be the monster Blasphemy. He uttered big words, and yet ever and anon I observed that he turned pale at his own courage. We entered. Some remained in the opening of the cave, with the one or the other of its guardians. The rest, and I among them, pressed on, till we reached an ample chamber, that seemed the centre of the rock. The climate of the place was unnaturally cold.
"In the furthest distance of the chamber sat an old dim-eyed man, poring with a microscope over the torso of a statue, which had neither base, nor feet, nor head; but on its breast was carved, Nature! To this he continually applied his glass, and seemed enraptured with the various inequalities which it rendered visible on the seemingly polished surface of the marble. Yet evermore was this delight and triumph followed by expressions of hatred, and vehement railing against a Being who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This mystery suddenly recalled to me what I had read in the holiest recess of the Temple ofSuperstition. The old man spoke in divers tongues, and continued to utter other and most strange mysteries. Among the rest he talked much and vehemently concerning an infinite series of causes and effects, which he explained to be—a string of blind men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the one before him, he of the next, and so on till they were all out of sight; and that they all walked infallibly straight, without making one false step, though all were alike blind. Methought I borrowed courage from surprise, and asked him—Who then is at the head to guide them? He looked at me with ineffable contempt, not unmixed with an angry suspicion, and then replied, 'No one;—the string of blind men went on for ever without any beginning: for although one blind man could not move without stumbling, yet infinite blindness supplied the want of sight.' I burst into laughter, which instantly turned to terror—for as he started forward in rage, I caught a glance of him from behind; and lo! I beheld a monster biform and Janus-headed, in the hinder face and shape of which I instantly recognised the dread countenance of Superstition—and in the terror I awoke."
Coleridge.
It needs scarcely be said, that an Epitaph presupposes a Monument, upon which it is to be engraven. Almost all Nations have wished that certain external signs should point out the places where their Dead are interred. Among savage Tribes unacquainted with Letters, this has mostly been done either by rude stones placed near the Graves, or by Mounds of earth raised over them. This custom proceeded obviously from a twofold desire; first, to guard the remains of the deceased from irreverent approach or from savage violation: and, secondly, to preserve their memory. "Never any," says Camden, "neglected burial but some savage Nations; as the Bactrians, which cast their dead to the dogs; some varlet Philosophers, as Diogenes, who desired to be devoured of fishes; some dissolute Courtiers, as Mæcenas, who was wont to say, Non tumulum curo; sepelit natura relictos.
"I'm careless of a Grave:—Nature her dead will save."
As soon as Nations had learned the use of letters, Epitaphs were inscribed upon these Monuments; in order that their intention might be more surely and adequately fulfilled. I have derived Monuments and Epitaphs from two sources of feeling: but these do in fact resolve themselves into one. The invention of Epitaphs, Weever, in his Discourse of Funeral Monuments, says rightly, "proceeded from the presage or fore-feeling of Immortality, implanted in all men naturally, and is referred to the Scholars of Linus the Theban Poet, who flourished about the year of the World two thousand seven hundred; who first bewailed this Linus their Master, when he was slain, in doleful verses, then called of him OElina, afterwards Epitaphia, for that they were first sung at burials, after engraved upon the Sepulchres."
And, verily, without the consciousness of a principle of Immortality in the human soul, Man could never have had awakened in him the desire to live in the remembrance of his fellows: mere love, or the yearning of Kind towards Kind, could not have produced it. The Dog or Horse perishes in the field, or in the stall, by the side of his companions, and is incapable of anticipating the sorrow with which his surrounding Associates shall bemoan his death, or pine for his loss; he cannot pre-conceive this regret, he can form no thought of it; and therefore cannot possibly have a desire to leave such regret or remembrance behind him. Add to the principle of love, which exists in the inferior animals, the faculty of reason which exists in Man alone; will the conjunction of these account for the desire? Doubtless it is a necessary consequence of this conjunction; yet not I think as a direct result, but only to be come at through an intermediate thought, viz. That of an intimation or assurance within us, that some part of our nature is imperishable. At least the precedence, in order of birth, of one feeling to the other, is unquestionable. If we look back upon the days of childhood, we shall find that the time is not in remembrance when, with respect to our own individual Being, the mind was without this assurance; whereas the wish to be remembered by our Friends or Kindred after Death, or even in Absence, is, as we shall discover, a sensation that does not form itself till thesocialfeelings have been developed, and the Reason has connected itself with a wide range of objects. Forlorn, and cut off from communication with the best part of his nature, must that Man be, who should derive the sense of immortality, as it exists in the mind of a Child, from the same unthinking gaiety or liveliness of animal Spirits with which the Lamb in the meadow, or any other irrational Creature, is endowed; who should ascribe it, in short, to blank ignorance in the Child; to an inability arising from the imperfect state of his faculties to come, in any point of his being, into contact with a notion of Death; or to an unreflecting acquiescence in what had been instilled into him! Has such an unfolder of the mysteries of Nature, though he may have forgotten his former self, ever noticed the early, obstinate, and unappeasable inquisitiveness of Children upon the subject of origination? This single fact proves outwardly the monstrousness of those suppositions: for, if we had no direct external testimony that the minds of very young Children meditate feelingly upon Death and Immortality, these inquiries, which we all know they are perpetually making concerning thewhence, do necessarily include correspondent habits of interrogation concerning thewhither. Origin and tendency are notions inseparably co-relative. Never did a Child stand by the side of a running Stream, pondering within himself what power was the feeder of the perpetual current, from what never-wearied sources the body of water was supplied, but he must have been inevitably propelled to follow this question by another: "towards what abyss is it in progress? what receptacle can contain the mighty influx?" And the spirit of the answer must have been, though the word might be Sea or Ocean, accompanied perhaps with an image gathered from a Map, or from the real object in Nature—these might have been theletter, but thespiritof the answer must have beenasinevitably,—a receptacle without bounds or dimensions;—nothing less than infinity. We may, then, be justified in asserting, that the sense of Immortality, if not a co-existent and twin birth with Reason, is among the earliest of her Offspring: and we may further assert, that from these conjoined, and under their countenance, the human affections are gradually formed and opened out. This is not the place to enter into the recesses of these investigations; but the subject requires me here to make a plain avowal, that, for my own part, it is to me inconceivable, that the sympathies of love towards each other, which grow with our growth, could ever attain any new strength, or even preserve the old, after we had received from the outward senses the impression of Death, and were in the habit of having that impression daily renewed and its accompanying feeling brought home to ourselves, and to those we love; if the same were not counteracted by those communications with our internal Being, which are anterior to all these experiences, and with which revelation coincides, and has through that coincidence alone (for otherwise it could not possess it) a power to affect us. I confess, with me the conviction is absolute, that, if the impression and sense of Death were not thus counterbalanced, such a hollowness would pervade the whole system of things, such a want of correspondence and consistency, a disproportion so astounding betwixt means and ends, that there could be no repose, no joy. Were we to grow up unfostered by this genial warmth, a frost would chill the spirit, so penetrating and powerful, that there could be no motions of the life of love; and infinitely less could we have any wish to be remembered after we had passed away from a world in which each man had moved about like a shadow.—If, then, in a Creature endowed with the faculties of foresight and reason, the social affections could not have unfolded themselves uncountenanced by the faith that Man is an immortal being; and if, consequently, neither could the individual dying have had a desire to survive in the remembrance of his fellows, nor on their side could they have felt a wish to preserve for future times vestiges of the departed; it follows, as a final inference, that without the belief in Immortality, wherein these several desires originate, neither monuments nor epitaphs, in affectionate or laudatory commemoration of the Deceased, could have existed in the world.
Simonides, it is related, upon landing in a strange Country, found the Corse of an unknown person, lying by the Sea-side; he buried it, and was honoured throughout Greece for the piety of that Act. Another ancient Philosopher, chancing to fix his eyes upon a dead Body, regarded the same with slight, if not with contempt; saying, "see the Shell of the flown Bird!" But it is not to be supposed that the moral and tender-hearted Simonides was incapable of the lofty movements of thought, to which that other Sage gave way at the moment while his soul was intent only upon the indestructible being; nor, on the other hand, that he, in whose sight a lifeless human Body was of no more value than the worthless Shell from which the living fowl had departed, would not, in a different mood of mind, have been affected by those earthly considerations which had incited the philosophic Poet to the performance of that pious duty. And with regard to this latter we may be assured that, if he had been destitute of the capability of communing with the more exalted thoughts that appertain to human Nature, he would have cared no more for the Corse of the Stranger than for the dead body of a Seal or Porpoise which might have been cast up by the Waves. We respect the corporeal frame of Man, not merely because it is the habitation of a rational, but of an immortal Soul. Each of these Sages was in Sympathy with the best feelings of our Nature; feelings which, though they seem opposite to each other, have another and a finer connection than that of contrast.—It is a connection formed through the subtle progress by which, both in the natural and the moral world, qualities pass insensibly into their contraries, and things revolve upon each other. As, in sailing upon the orb of this Planet, a voyage towards the regions where the sun sets, conducts gradually to the quarter where we have been accustomed to behold it come forth at its rising; and, in like manner, a voyage towards the east, the birth-place in our imagination of the morning, leads finally to the quarter where the Sun is last seen when he departs from our eyes; so the contemplative Soul, travelling in the direction of mortality, advances to the Country of everlasting Life; and, in like manner, may she continue to explore those cheerful tracts, till she is brought back, for her advantage and benefit, to the land of transitory things—of sorrow and of tears.
On a midway point, therefore, which commands the thoughts and feelings of the two Sages whom we have represented in contrast, does the Author of that species of composition, the Laws of which it is our present purpose to explain, take his stand. Accordingly, recurring to the twofold desire of guarding the Remains of the deceased and preserving their memory, it may be said that a sepulchral Monument is a tribute to a Man as a human Being; and that an Epitaph, (in the ordinary meaning attached to the word) includes this general feeling and something more; and is a record to preserve the memory of the dead, as a tribute due to his individual worth, for a satisfaction to the sorrowing hearts of the Survivors, and for the common benefit of the living: which record is to be accomplished, not in a general manner, but, where it can, inclose connection with the bodily remains of the deceased: and these, it may be added, among the modern Nations of Europe are deposited within, or contiguous to their places of worship. In ancient times, as is well known, it was the custom to bury the dead beyond the Walls of Towns and Cities; and among the Greeks and Romans they were frequently interred by the waysides.
I could here pause with pleasure, and invite the Reader to indulge with me in contemplation of the advantages which must have attended such a practice. We might ruminate upon the beauty which the Monuments, thus placed, must have borrowed from the surrounding images of Nature—from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream running perhaps within sight or hearing, from the beaten road stretching its weary length hard by. Many tender similitudes must these objects have presented to the mind of the Traveller leaning upon one of the Tombs, or reposing in the coolness of its shade, whether he had halted from weariness or in compliance with the invitation, "Pause, Traveller!" so often found upon the Monuments. And to its Epitaph also must have been supplied strong appeals to visible appearances or immediate impressions, lively and affecting analogies of Life as a Journey—Death as a Sleep overcoming the tired Wayfarer—of Misfortune as a Storm that falls suddenly upon him—of Beauty as a Flower that passeth away, or of innocent pleasure as one that may be gathered—of Virtue that standeth firm as a Rock against the beating Waves;—of Hope "undermined insensibly like the Poplar by the side of the River that has fed it," or blasted in a moment like a Pine-tree by the stroke of lightning upon the Mountain-top—of admonitions and heart-stirring remembrances, like a refreshing Breeze that comes without warning, or the taste of the waters of an unexpected Fountain. These, and similar suggestions, must have given, formerly, to the language of the senseless stone a voice enforced and endeared by the benignity of that Nature with which it was in unison.—We, in modern times, have lost much of these advantages; and they are but in a small degree counterbalanced to the Inhabitants of large Towns and Cities, by the custom of depositing the Dead within, or contiguous to, their places of worship; however splendid or imposing may be the appearance of those Edifices, or however interesting or salutary the recollections associated with them. Even were it not true that Tombs lose their monitory virtue when thus obtruded upon the Notice of Men occupied with the cares of the World, and too often sullied and defiled by those cares, yet still, when Death is in our thoughts, nothing can make amends for the want of the soothing influences of Nature, and for the absence of those types of renovation and decay, which the fields and woods offer to the notice of the serious and contemplative mind. To feel the force of this sentiment, let a man only compare in imagination the unsightly manner in which our Monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost grassless Church-yard of a large Town, with the still seclusion of a Turkish Cemetery, in some remote place; and yet further sanctified by the Grove of Cypress in which it is embosomed. Thoughts in the same temper as these have already been expressed with true sensibility by an ingenious Poet of the present day. The subject of his Poem is "All Saints Church, Derby": he has been deploring the forbidding and unseemly appearance of its burial-ground, and uttering a wish, that in past times the practice had been adopted of interring the Inhabitants of large Towns in the Country.—
Then in some rural, calm, sequestered spot,Where healing Nature her benignant lookNe'er changes, save at that lorn season, when,With tresses drooping o'er her sable stole,She yearly mourns the mortal doom of man,Her noblest work (so Israel's virgins erst,With annual moan upon the mountains weptTheir fairest gone), there in that rural scene,So placid, so congenial to the wishThe Christian feels, of peaceful rest withinThe silent grave, I would have strayed:
* * * * *
—wandered forth, where the cold dew of heavenLay on the humbler graves around, what timeThe pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds,Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse,'Twere brooding on the Dead inhumed beneath.There while with him, the holy man of Uz,O'er human destiny I sympathized,Counting the long, long periods prophecyDecrees to roll, ere the great day arrivesOf resurrection, oft the blue-eyed SpringHad met me with her blossoms, as the Dove,Of old, returned with olive leaf, to cheerThe Patriarch mourning over a world destroyed:And I would bless her visit; for to me'Tis sweet to trace the consonance that linksAs one, the works of Nature and the wordOf God.—
A Village Church-yard, lying as it does in the lap of Nature, may indeed be most favourably contrasted with that of a Town of crowded Population; and Sepulture therein combines many of the best tendencies which belong to the mode practised by the Ancients, with others peculiar to itself. The sensations of pious cheerfulness, which attend the celebration of the Sabbath-day in rural places, are profitably chastised by the sight of the Graves of Kindred and Friends, gathered together in that general Home towards which the thoughtful yet happy Spectators themselves are journeying. Hence a Parish Church, in the stillness of the Country, is a visible centre of a community of the living and the dead; a point to which are habitually referred the nearest concerns of both.
As, then, both in Cities and in Villages, the Dead are deposited in close connection with our places of worship, with us the composition of an Epitaph naturally turns, still more than among the Nations of Antiquity, upon the most serious and solemn affections of the human mind; upon departed Worth—upon personal or social Sorrow and Admiration—upon Religion, individual and social—upon Time, and upon eternity. Accordingly it suffices, in ordinary cases, to secure a composition of this kind from censure, that it contains nothing that shall shock or be inconsistent with this spirit. But to entitle an Epitaph to praise, more than this is necessary. It ought to contain some Thought or Feeling belonging to the mortal or immortal part of our Nature touchingly expressed; and if that be done, however general or even trite the sentiment may be, every man of pure mind will read the words with pleasure and gratitude. A Husband bewails a Wife; a Parent breathes a sigh of disappointed hope over a lost Child; a Son utters a sentiment of filial reverence for a departed Father or Mother; a Friend perhaps inscribes an encomium recording the companionable qualities, or the solid virtues, of the Tenant of the Grave, whose departure has left a sadness upon his memory. This, and a pious admonition to the Living, and a humble expression of Christian confidence in Immortality, is the language of a thousand Church-yards; and it does not often happen that any thing, in a greater degree discriminate or appropriate to the Dead or to the Living, is to be found in them. This want of discrimination has been ascribed by Dr. Johnson, in his Essay upon the Epitaphs of Pope, to two causes; first, the scantiness of the Objects of human praise; and, secondly, the want of variety in the Characters of Men; or, to use his own words, "to the fact, that the greater part of Mankind have no character at all." Such language may be holden without blame among the generalities of common conversation; but does not become a Critic and a Moralist speaking seriously upon a serious Subject. The objects of admiration in Human-nature are not scanty, but abundant; and every Man has a Character of his own, to the eye that has skill to perceive it. The real cause of the acknowledged want of discrimination in sepulchral memorials is this: That to analyse the Characters of others, especially of those whom we love, is not a common or natural employment of Men at any time. We are not anxious unerringly to understand the constitution of the Minds of those who have soothed, who have cheered, who have supported us: with whom we have been long and daily pleased or delighted. The affections are their own justification. The Light of Love in our Hearts is a satisfactory evidence that there is a body of worth in the minds of our friends or kindred, whence that Light has proceeded. We shrink from the thought of placing their merits and defects to be weighed against each other in the nice balance of pure intellect; nor do we find much temptation to detect the shades by which a good quality or virtue is discriminated in them from an excellence known by the same general name as it exists in the mind of another; and, least of all, do we incline to these refinements when under the pressure of Sorrow, Admiration, or Regret, or when actuated by any of those feelings which incite men to prolong the memory of their Friends and Kindred, by records placed in the bosom of the all-uniting and equalizing Receptacle of the Dead.
The first requisite, then, in an Epitaph is, that it should speak, in a tone which shall sink into the heart, the general language of humanity as connected with the subject of Death—the source from which an Epitaph proceeds; of death and of life. To be born and to die are the two points in which all men feel themselves to be in absolute coincidence. This general language may be uttered so strikingly as to entitle an Epitaph to high praise; yet it cannot lay claim to the highest unless other excellencies be superadded. Passing through all intermediate steps, we will attempt to determine at once what these excellencies are, and wherein consists the perfection of this species of composition. It will be found to lie in a due proportion of the common or universal feeling of humanity to sensations excited by a distinct and clear conception, conveyed to the Reader's mind, of the Individual, whose death is deplored and whose memory is to be preserved; at least of his character as, after Death, it appeared to those who loved him and lament his loss. The general sympathy ought to be quickened, provoked, and diversified, by particular thoughts, actions, images,—circumstances of age, occupation, manner of life, prosperity which the Deceased had known, or adversity to which he had been subject; and these ought to be bound together and solemnized into one harmony by the general sympathy. The two powers should temper, restrain, and exalt each other. The Reader ought to know who and what the Man was whom he is called to think upon with interest. A distinct conception should be given (implicitly where it can, rather than explicitly) of the Individual lamented. But the Writer of an Epitaph is not an Anatomist who dissects the internal frame of the mind; he is not even a Painter who executes a portrait at leisure and in entire tranquillity: his delineation, we must remember, is performed by the side of the Grave; and, what is more, the grave of one whom he loves and admires. What purity and brightness is that virtue clothed in, the image of which must no longer bless our living eyes! The character of a deceased Friend or beloved Kinsman is not seen, no—nor ought to be seen, otherwise than as a Tree through a tender haze or a luminous mist, that spiritualizes and beautifies it; that takes away indeed, but only to the end that the parts which are not abstracted may appear more dignified and lovely, may impress and affect the more. Shall we say, then, that this is not truth, not a faithful image; and that accordingly the purposes of commemoration cannot be answered?—Itistruth, and of the highest order! for, though doubtless things are not apparent which did exist; yet, the object being looked at through this medium, parts and proportions are brought into distinct view, which before had been only imperfectly or unconsciously seen: it is truth hallowed by love—the joint offspring of the worth of the Dead and the affections of the Living?—This may easily be brought to the test. Let one, whose eyes have been sharpened by personal hostility to discover what was amiss in the character of a good man, hear the tidings of his death, and what a change is wrought in a moment!—Enmity melts away; and, as it disappears, unsightliness, disproportion, and deformity, vanish; and, through the influence of commiseration, a harmony of love and beauty succeeds. Bring such a Man to the Tombstone on which shall be inscribed an Epitaph on his Adversary, composed in the spirit which we have recommended. Would he turn from it as from an idle tale! No—the thoughtful look, the sigh, and perhaps the involuntary tear, would testify that it had a sane, a generous, and good meaning; and that on the Writer's mind had remained an impression which was a true abstract of the character of the deceased; that his gifts and graces were remembered in the simplicity in which they ought to be remembered. The composition and quality of the mind of a virtuous man, contemplated by the side of the Grave where his body is mouldering, ought to appear, and be felt as something midway between what he was on Earth walking about with his living frailties, and what he may be presumed to be as a Spirit in Heaven.
It suffices, therefore, that the Trunk and the main Branches of the Worth of the Deceased be boldly and unaffectedly represented. Any further detail, minutely and scrupulously pursued, especially if this be done with laborious and antithetic discriminations, must inevitably frustrate its own purpose; forcing the passing Spectator to this conclusion,—either that the Dead did not possess the merits ascribed to him, or that they who have raised a monument to his memory, and must therefore be supposed to have been closely connected with him, were incapable of perceiving those merits; or at least during the act of composition had lost sight of them; for, the Understanding having been so busy in its petty occupation, how could the heart of the Mourner be other than cold? and in either of these cases, whether the fault be on the part of the buried Person or the Survivors, the Memorial is unaffecting and profitless.
Much better is it to fall short in discrimination than to pursue it too far, or to labour it unfeelingly. For in no place are we so much disposed to dwell upon those points, of nature and condition, wherein all Men resemble each other, as in the Temple where the universal Father is worshipped, or by the side of the Grave which gathers all Human Beings to itself, and "equalizes the lofty and the low." We suffer and we weep with the same heart; we love and are anxious for one another in one spirit; our hopes look to the same quarter; and the virtues by which we are all to be furthered and supported, as patience, meekness, good-will, temperance, and temperate desires, are in an equal degree the concern of us all. Let an Epitaph, then, contain at least these acknowledgments to our common nature; nor let the sense of their importance be sacrificed to a balance of opposite qualities or minute distinctions in individual character; which if they do not, (as will for the most part be the case) when examined, resolve themselves into a trick of words, will, even when they are true and just, for the most part be grievously out of place; for, as it is probable that few only have explored these intricacies of human nature, so can the tracing of them be interesting only to a few. But an Epitaph is not a proud Writing shut up for the studious; it is exposed to all, to the wise and the most ignorant; it is condescending, perspicuous, and lovingly solicits regard; its story and admonitions are brief, that the thoughtless, the busy, and indolent, may not be deterred, nor the impatient tired; the stooping old Man cons the engraven record like a second horn-book;—the Child is proud that he can read it—and the Stranger is introduced by its mediation to the company of a Friend: it is concerning all, and for all:—in the Churchyard it is open to the day; the sun looks down upon the stone, and the rains of Heaven beat against it.
Yet, though the Writer who would excite sympathy is bound in this case more than in any other, to give proof that he himself has been moved, it is to be remembered, that to raise a Monument is a sober and a reflective act; that the inscription which it bears is intended to be permanent, and for universal perusal; and that, for this reason, the thoughts and feelings expressed should be permanent also—liberated from that weakness and anguish of sorrow which is in nature transitory, and which with instinctive decency retires from notice. The passions should be subdued, the emotions controlled; strong indeed, but nothing ungovernable or wholly involuntary. Seemliness requires this, and truth requires it also: for how can the Narrator otherwise be trusted? Moreover, a Grave is a tranquillizing object: resignation in course of time springs up from it as naturally as the wild flowers, besprinkling the turf with which it may be covered, or gathering round the monument by which it is defended. The very form and substance of the monument which has received the inscription, and the appearance of the letters, testifying with what a slow and laborious hand they must have been engraven, might seem to reproach the Author who had given way upon this occasion to transports of mind, or to quick turns of conflicting passion; though the same might constitute the life and beauty of a funeral Oration or elegiac Poem.
These sensations and judgments, acted upon perhaps unconsciously, have been one of the main causes why Epitaphs so often personate the Deceased, and represent him as speaking from his own Tombstone. The departed Mortal is introduced telling you himself that his pains are gone; that a state of rest is come; and he conjures you to weep for him no longer. He admonishes with the voice of one experienced in the vanity of those affections which are confined to earthly objects, and gives a verdict like a superior Being, performing the office of a Judge, who has no temptations to mislead him, and whose decision cannot but be dispassionate. Thus is Death disarmed of its sting, and affliction unsubstantialized. By this tender fiction, the Survivors bind themselves to a sedater sorrow, and employ the intervention of the imagination in order that the reason may speak her own language earlier than she would otherwise have been enabled to do. This shadowy interposition also harmoniously unites the two worlds of the Living and the Dead by their appropriate affections. And I may observe, that here we have an additional proof of the propriety with which sepulchral inscriptions were referred to the consciousness of Immortality as their primal source.
I do not speak with a wish to recommend that an Epitaph should be cast in this mould preferably to the still more common one, in which what is said comes from the Survivors directly; but rather to point out how natural those feelings are which have induced men, in all states and ranks of Society, so frequently to adopt this mode. And this I have done chiefly in order that the laws, which ought to govern the composition of the other, may be better understood. This latter mode, namely, that in which the Survivors speak in their own Persons, seems to me upon the whole greatly preferable: as it admits a wider range of notices; and, above all, because, excluding the fiction which is the groundwork of the other, it rests upon a more solid basis.
Enough has been said to convey our notion of a perfect Epitaph; but it must be observed that one is meant which will best answer thegeneralends of that species of composition. According to the course pointed out, the worth of private life, through all varieties of situation and character, will be most honourably and profitably preserved in memory. Nor would the model recommended less suit public Men, in all instances save of those persons who by the greatness of their services in the employments of Peace or War, or by the surpassing excellence of their works in Art, Literature, or Science, have made themselves not only universally known, but have filled the heart of their Country with everlasting gratitude. Yet I must here pause to correct myself. In describing the general tenour of thought which Epitaphs ought to hold, I have omitted to say, that, if it be theactionsof a Man, or even someoneconspicuous or beneficial act of local or general utility, which have distinguished him, and excited a desire that he should be remembered, then, of course, ought the attention to be directed chiefly to those actions or that act; and such sentiments dwelt upon as naturally arise out of them or it. Having made this necessary distinction, I proceed.—The mighty benefactors of mankind, as they are not only known by the immediate Survivors, but will continue to be known familiarly to latest Posterity, do not stand in need of biographic sketches, in such a place; nor of delineations of character to individualize them. This is already done by their Works, in the Memories of Men. Their naked names and a grand comprehensive sentiment of civic Gratitude, patriotic Love, or human Admiration; or the utterance of some elementary Principle most essential in the constitution of true Virtue; or an intuition, communicated in adequate words, of the sublimity of intellectual Power,—these are the only tribute which can here be paid—the only offering that upon such an Altar would not be unworthy!
What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones,The labour of an age in piled stones,Or that his hallowed reliques should be hidUnder a starry-pointing pyramid?Dear Son of Memory, great Heir of Fame,What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name?Thou in our wonder and astonishmentHast built thyself a live-long Monument,And so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
Wordsworth.
When my father was in Broughton Place Church, we had a doorkeeper calledJeems, and a formidable little man and doorkeeper he was; of unknown age and name, for he existed to us, and indeed still exists to me—though he has been in his grave these sixteen years—asJeems, absolute andper se, no more needing a surname than did or do Abraham or Isaac, Samson or Nebuchadnezzar. We young people of the congregation believed that he was out in the '45, and had his drum shot through and quenched at Culloden; and as for any indication on his huge and grey visage, of his ever having been young, he might safely have beenBottomthe Weaver inA Midsummer Night's Dream, or that excellent, ingenious, and "wise-hearted" Bezaleel, the son of Uri, whomJeemsregarded as one of the greatest of men and of weavers, and whose "ten curtains of fine twined linen, and blue, and purple, and scarlet, each of them with fifty loops on the edge of the selvedge in the coupling, with their fifty taches of gold," he, in confidential moments, gave it to be understood were the sacred triumphs of his craft; for, as you may infer, my friend was a man of the treddles and the shuttle, as well as the more renowned grandson of Hur.
Jeems'sface was so extensive, and met you so formidably and at once, that it mainly composed his whole; and such a face! Sydney Smith used to say of a certain quarrelsome man, "His very face is a breach of the peace." Had he seen our friend's, he would have said he was the imperative mood on two (very small) legs, out on business in a blue greatcoat. It was in the nose and the keen small eye that his strength lay. Such a nose of power, so undeniable, I never saw, except in what was said to be a bust from the antique, of Rhadamanthus, the well-known Justice-Clerk of the Pagan Court of Session! Indeed, when I was in the Rector's class, and watchedJeemsturning interlopers out of the church seats, by merely presenting before them this tremendous organ, it struck me that if Rhadamanthus had still been here, and out of employment, he would have taken kindly toJeems'swork,—and that possibly he was that potentate in a U. P. disguise.
Nature having fashioned the huge face, and laid out much material and idea upon it, had finished off the rest ofJeemssomewhat scrimply, as if she had run out of means; his legs especially were of the shortest, and, as his usual dress was a very long blue greatcoat, made for a much taller man, its tails resting upon the ground, and its large hind buttons in a totally preposterous position, gave him the look of being planted, or rather after the manner of Milton's beasts at the creation, in the act of emerging painfully from his mother earth.
Now, you may think this was a very ludicrous old object. If you had seen him, you would not have said so; and not only was he a man of weight and authority,—he was likewise a genuine, indeed a deeply spiritual Christian, well read in his Bible, in his own heart, and in human nature and life, knowing both its warp and woof; more peremptory in making himself obey his Master, than in getting himself obeyed, and this is saying a good deal; and, like all complete men, he had a genuine love and gift of humour,[42] kindly and uncouth, lurking in those small, deep-set grey eyes, shrewd and keen, which, like two sharpest of shooters, enfiladed that massive and redoubtable bulwark, the nose.
[Footnote 42: On one occasion a descendant of Nabal having put a crown piece into "the plate" instead of a penny, and staring at its white and precious face, asked to have it back, and was refused—"In once, in for ever." "A weel, a weel," grunted he, "I'll get credit for it in heaven." "Na, na," saidJeems, "ye'll get credit only for the penny!"]
One day two strangers made themselves over toJeemsto be furnished with seats. Motioning them to follow, he walked majestically to the farthest in corner, where he had decreed they should sit. The couple found seats near the door, and stepped into them, leavingJeemsto march through the passages alone, the whole congregation watching him with some relish and alarm. He gets to his destination, opens the door, and stands aside; nobody appears. He looks sharply round, and then gives a look of general wrath "at lairge." No one doubted his victory. His nose and eye fell, or seemed to fall, on the two culprits, and pulled them out instantly, hurrying them to their appointed place;Jeemssnibbed them slowly in, and gave them a parting look they were not likely to misunderstand or forget.
At that time the crowds and the imperfect ventilation made fainting a common occurrence in Broughton Place, especially among "thae young hizzies," asJeemscalled the servant girls. He generally came to me, "the young Doctor," on these occasions with a look of great relish. I had indoctrinated him in the philosophy ofsyncopes, especially as to the propriety of laying the "hizzies" quite flat on the floor of the lobby, with the head as low as the rest of the body; and as many of these cases were owing to whatJeemscalled "that bitter yerkin" of their boddices, he and I had much satisfaction in relieving them, and giving them a moral lesson, by cutting their stay-laces, which ran before the knife, and cracked "like a bowstring," as my coadjutor said. One day a young lady was our care. She was lying out, and slowly coming to.Jeems, with that huge terrific visage, came round to me with his opengullyin his hand, whispering, "Wull oo ripp 'er up noo?" It happened not to be a case for ripping up. The gully was a great sanitary institution, and made a decided inroad upon theyerkingsystem—Jeemshaving, thanks to this and Dr. Coombe, every year fewer opportunities of displaying and enjoying its powers.
He was sober in other things besides drink, could be generous on occasion, but was careful of his siller; sensitive to fierceness ("we're uncommonzeelyousthe day," was a favourite phrase when any church matter was stirring) for the honour of his church and minister, and to his too often worthless neighbours a perpetual moral protest and lesson—a living epistle. He dwelt at the head of big Lochend's Close in the Canongate, at the top of a long stair—ninety-six steps, as I well know—where he had dwelt, all by himself, for five-and-thirty years, and where, in the midst of all sorts of flittings and changes, not a day opened or closed without the well-known sound ofJeemsat his prayers,—his "exercise,"—at "the Books." His clear, fearless, honest voice in psalm and chapter, and strong prayer, came sounding through that wide "land," like that of one crying in the wilderness.
Jeemsand I got great friends; he called me John, as if he was my grandfather; and though as plain in speech as in feature, he was never rude. I owe him much in many ways. His absolute downrightness andyaefauldness; his energetic, unflinching fulfilment of his work; his rugged, sudden tenderness; his look of sturdy age, as the thick silver-white hair lay on his serious and weatherworn face, like moonlight on a stout old tower; his quaint Old Testament exegetics, his lonely and contented life, his simple godliness,—it was no small privilege to see much of all this.
But I must stop. I forget that you didn't know him; that he is not yourJeems. If it had been so, you would not soon have wearied of telling or of being told of the life and conversation of this "fell body." He was not communicative about his early life. He would sometimes speak to me about "her," as if I knew who and where she was, and always with a gentleness and solemnity unlike his usual gruff ways. I found out that he had been married when young, and that "she" (he never named her) and their child died on the same day,—the day of its birth. The only indication of married life in his room, was an old and strong cradle, which he had cut down so as to rock no more, and which he made the depository of his books—a queer collection.
I have said that he had what he called, with a grave smile,familyworship, morning and evening, never failing. He not only sang his psalm, but gave out or chantedthe linein great style; and on seeing me one morning surprised at this, he said, "Ye see John,oo," meaning himself and his wife, "began that way." He had a firm, true voice, and a genuine though roughish gift of singing, and being methodical in all things, he did what I never heard of in any one else,—he had seven fixed tunes, one of which he sang on its own set day. Sabbath morning it wasFrench, which he went through with greatbirr. Monday,Scarborough, which, he said, was like my father cantering. Tuesday,Coleshill, that soft exquisite air,—monotonous and melancholy, soothing and vague, like the sea. This day, Tuesday, was the day of the week on which his wife and child died, and he always sang more verses then than on any other. Wednesday wasIrish; Thursday,Old Hundred; Friday,Bangor; and Saturday,Blackburn, that humdrummest of tunes, "as long, and lank, and lean, as is the ribbed sea-sand." He could not defend it, but had some secret reason for sticking to it. As to the evenings, they were just the same tunes in reversed order, only that on Tuesday night he sangColeshillagain, thus droppingBlackburnfor evening work. The children could tell the day of the week byJeems'stune, and would have been as much astonished at hearingBangoron Monday, as at finding St. Giles's half-way down the Canongate.
I frequently breakfasted with him. He made capital porridge, and I wish I could get such butter-milk, or at least have such a relish for it, as in those days. Jeems is away—gone over to the majority; and I hope I may never forget to be grateful to the dear and queer old man. I think I see and hear him saying his grace over our bickers with theirbratson, then taking his two books out of the cradle and reading, not without a certain homely majesty, the first verse of the 99th Psalm,
"Th' eternal Lord doth reign as king,Let all the people quake;He sits between the cherubims,Let th' earth be mov'd and shake;"
then launching out into the noble depths ofIrish. His chapters were long, and his prayers short, very scriptural, but by no means stereotyped, and wonderfully real,immediate, as if he was near Him whom he addressed. Any one hearing the sound and not the words, would say, "That man is speaking to some one who is with him—who is present,"—as he often said to me, "There's nae glide dune, John, till ye get to closegrups."
Now, I dare say you are marvelling—first, Why I brought this grim, old Rhadamanthus, Belzaleel, U. P. Naso of a doorkeeper up before you; andsecondly, How I am to get him down decorously in that ancient blue greatcoat, and get at my own proper text.
And first of thefirst. I thought it would do you young men—the hope of the world—no harm to let your affections go out toward this dear, old-world specimen of homespun worth. And as to thesecond, I am going to make it my excuse for what is to come. One day soon after I knew him, when I thought he was in a soft, confidential mood, I said: "Jeems, what kind of weaver are you?" "I'm in the fancical line, maister John," said he somewhat stiffly; "I like itsleecence." Soexit Jeems—impiger, iracundus, acer—torvus visu—placide quiescat!
Now, my dear friends, I am in thefancicalline as well asJeems, and in virtue of myleecence, I begin my exegetical remarks on the pursuit of truth. By the bye, I should have told Sir Henry that it was truth, not knowledge, I was to be after. Now all knowledge should be true, but it isn't; much of what is called knowledge is very little worth even when true, and much of the best truth is not in a strict sense knowable,—rather it is felt and believed.
Exegetical, you know, is the grand and fashionable word now-a-days for explanatory; it means bringing out of a passage all that is in it, and nothing more. For my part, being inJeems'sline, I am not so particular as to the nothing more. Wefancicalmen are much given to make somethings of nothings; indeed, the noble Italians, call imagination and poetic fancythe little more; its very function is to embellish and intensify the actual and the common. Now you must not laugh at me, or it, when I announce the passage from which I mean to preach upon the pursuit of truth, and the possession of wisdom:—
"On Tintock tap there is a Mist,And in the Mist there is a Kist,And in the Kist there is a Cap;Tak' up the Cap and sup the drap,And set the Cap on Tintock tap."
And as to what Sir Henry[43] would call the context, we are saved all trouble, there being none, the passage being self-contained, and as destitute of relations as Melchisedec.
[Footnote 43: This was read to Sir Henry W. Moncreiff's Young Men'sAssociation, November 1862.]
Tintock, you all know, or should know, is a big porphyritic hill in Lanarkshire, standing alone, and dominating like a king over the Upper Ward. Then we all understand what amistis; and it is worth remembering that as it is more difficult to penetrate, to illuminate, and to see through mist than darkness, so it is easier to enlighten and overcome ignorance, than error, confusion, and mental mist. Then akistis Scotch for chest, and acapthe same forcup, anddrapfor drop. Well, then, I draw out of these queer old lines—
First, That to gain real knowledge, to get it at firsthand, you must go up the Hill Difficulty—some Tintock, something you see from afar—and you mustclimb; you must energize, as Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Chalmers said and did; you must turn your back upon the plain, and you must mainly go alone, and on your own legs. Two boys may start together on going up Tinto, and meet at the top; but the journeys are separate, each takes his own line.
Secondly, You start for your Tintock top with a given object, to get into the mist and get the drop, and you do this chiefly because you have the truth-hunting instinct; you long to know what is hidden there, for there is a wild and urgent charm in the unknown; and you want to realize for yourself what others, it may have been ages ago, tell they have found there.
Thirdly, There is no road up; no omnibus to the top of Tinto; you must zigzag it in your own way, and as I have already said, most part of it alone.
Fourthly, This climbing, this exaltation, and buckling to of the mind, of itself does you good;[44] it is capital exercise, and you find out many a thing by the way. Your lungs play freely; your mouth fills with the sweet waters of keen action; the hill tries your wind and mettle, supples and hardens your joints and limbs; quickens and rejoices, while it tests your heart.
[Footnote 44: "In this pursuit, whether we take or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service."—BURKE.]
Fifthly, You have many a fall, many a false step; you slip back, you tumble into amoss-hagg; you stumble over the baffling stones; you break your shins and lose your temper, and the finding of it makes you keep it better the next time; you get more patient, and yet more eager, and not unoften you come to a stand-still; run yourself up against, or to the edge of, some impossible precipice, some insoluble problem, and have to turn for your life; and you may find yourself over head in a treacherouswellee, whose soft inviting cushion of green has decoyed many a one before you.
Sixthly, You are for ever mistaking the top; thinking you are at it, when, behold! there it is, as if farther off than ever, and you may have to humble yourself in a hidden valley before reascending; and so on you go, at times flinging yourself down on the elastic heather, stretched panting with your face to the sky, or gazing far away athwart the widening horizon.
Seventhly, As you get up, you may see how the world below lessens and reveals itself, comes up to you as a whole, with its just proportions and relations; how small the village you live in looks, and the house in which you were born; how the plan of the place comes out; there is the quiet churchyard, and a lamb is nibbling at that infant's grave; there, close to the little church, your mother rests till the great day; and there far off you may trace the river winding through the plain, coming like human life, from darkness to darkness,—from its source in some wild, upland solitude to its eternity, the sea. But you have rested long enough, so, up and away! take the hill once again! Every effort is a victory and joy—new skill and power and relish—takes you farther from the world below, nearer the clouds and heavens; and you may note that the more you move up towards the pure blue depths of the sky—the more lucid and the more unsearchable—the farther off, the more withdrawn into their own clear infinity do they seem. Well, then, you get to the upper story, and you find it less difficult, less steep than lower down; often so plain and level that you can run off in an ecstasy to the crowning cairn, to the sacred mist—within whose cloudy shrine rests the unknown secret; some great truth of God and of your own soul; something that is not to be gotten for gold down on the plain, but may be taken here; something that no man can give or take away; something that you must work for and learn yourself, and which, once yours, is safe beyond the chances of time.
Eighthly, You enter that luminous cloud, stooping and as a little child—as, indeed, all the best kingdoms are entered—and pressing on, you come in the shadowy light to the long-dreamt-of ark,—the chest. It is shut, it is locked; but if you are the man I take you to be, you have the key, put it gently in, steadily, and home. But what is the key? It is the love of truth; neither more nor less; no other key opens it; no false one, however cunning, can pick that lock; no assault of hammer, however stout, can force it open. But with its own key a little child may open it, often does open it, it goes so sweetly, so with a will. You lift the lid; you are all alone; the cloud is round you with a sort of tender light of its own, shutting out the outer world, filling you with aneeriejoy, as if alone and yet not alone. You see the cup within, and in it the one crystalline, unimaginable, inestimable drop; glowing and tremulous, as if alive. You take up the cup, you sup the drop; it enters into, and becomes of the essence of yourself; and so, in humble gratitude and love, "in sober certainty of waking bliss," you gently replace the cup. It will gather again,—it is for ever gathering; no man, woman, or child ever opened that chest, and found no drop in the cup. It might not be the very drop expected; it will serve their purpose none the worse, often much the better.
And now, bending down, you shut the lid, which you hear locking itself afresh against all but the sacred key. You leave the now hallowed mist. You look out on the old familiar world again, which somehow looks both new and old. You descend, making your observations over again, throwing the light of the present on the past; and past and present set against the boundless future. You hear coming up to you the homely sounds—the sheepdog's bark, "the cock's shrill clarion"—from the farm at the hill-foot; you hear the ring of the blacksmith'sstudy, you see the smoke of his forge; your mother's grave has the long shadows of evening lying across it, the sunlight falling on the letters of her name, and on the number of her years; the lamb is asleep in the bield of the infant's grave. Speedily you are at your own door. You enter with wearied feet, and thankful heart; you shut the door, and you kneel down and pray to your Father in heaven, the Father of lights, your reconciled Father, the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and our God and Father in and through him. And as you lie down on your own delightful bed, before you fall asleep, you think over again your ascent of the Hill Difficulty,—its baffling heights, its reaches of dreary moorland, its shifting gravel, its precipices, its quagmires, its little wells of living waters near the top, and all its "dread magnificence;" its calm, restful summit, the hush of silence there, the all-aloneness of the place and hour; its peace, its sacredness, its divineness. You see again the mist, the ark, the cup, the gleaming drop, and recalling the sight of the world below, the earth and all its fulness, you say to yourself,—
"These are thy glorious works, Parent of good,Almighty, thine this universal frame,Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens."
And finding the burden too heavy even for these glorious lines, you take refuge in the Psalms—
"Praise ye the Lord.Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights.Praise him in the firmament of his power.Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps;Fire and hail; snow and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars;Beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl:Kings of the earth, and all people; princes and all judges of theearth:Both young men and maidens; old men and children:Let them praise the name of the Lord:For his name alone is excellent; his glory is above the earth andheaven.Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.Bless the Lord, O my soul!"
I need hardly draw the moral of this, our somewhatfancicalexercitation and exegesis. You can all make it out, such as it is. It is the toil, and the joy, and the victory in the search of truth; not the taking on trust, or learning by rote, not by heart, what other men count or call true; but the vital appropriation, the assimilation of truth to ourselves, and of ourselves to truth. All truth is of value, but one truth differs from another in weight and in brightness, in worth; and you need not me to tell you that spiritual and eternal truth, the truth as it is in Jesus, is the best. And don't think that your own hand has gotten you the victory, and that you had no unseen, and it may be unfelt and unacknowledged hand guiding you up the hill. Unless the Lord had been at and on your side, all your labour would have been in vain, and worse. No two things are more inscrutable or less uncertain than man's spontaneity and man's helplessness,—Freedom and Grace as the two poles. It is His doing that you are led to the right hill and the right road, for there are other Tintocks, with other kists, and other drops. Work out, therefore, your own knowledge with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, and to know of His good pleasure. There is no explaining and there is no disbelieving this.
And now, before bidding you good-bye, did you ever think of the spiritual meaning of the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, as connected with our knowledge and our ignorance, our light and darkness, our gladness and our sorrow? The everyday use of this divine alternation to the wandering children of Israel, is plain enough. Darkness is best seen against light, and light against darkness; and its use, in a deeper sense of keeping for ever before them the immediate presence of God in the midst of them, is not less plain; but I sometimes think, that we who also are still in the wilderness, and coming up from our Egypt and its fleshpots, and on our way let us hope, through God's grace, to the celestial Canaan, may draw from these old-world signs and wonders, that, in the mid-day of knowledge, with daylight all about us, there is, if one could but look for it, that perpetual pillar of cloud—that sacred darkness which haunts all human knowledge, often the most at its highest noon; that "look that threatens the profane;" that something, and above all, that sense ofSome One,—that Holy One, who inhabits eternity and its praises, who makes darkness His secret place, His pavilion round about, darkness and thick clouds of the sky.
And again, that in the deepest, thickest night of doubt, of fear, of sorrow, of despair; that then, and all the most then—if we will but look in the rightairt, and with the seeing eye and the understanding heart—there may be seen that Pillar of fire, of light and of heat, to guide and quicken and cheer; knowledge and love, that everlasting love which we know to be the Lord's. And how much better off are we than the chosen people; their pillars were on earth, divine in their essence, but subject doubtless to earthly perturbations and interferences; but our guiding light is in the heavens, towards which we take earnest heed that we are journeying.
"Once on the raging seas I rode,The storm was loud, the night was dark;The ocean yawned, and rudely blowedThe wind that toss'd my foundering bark.
Deep horror then my vitals froze,Death-struck, I ceased the tide to stem,When suddenly a star arose,It was the Star of Bethlehem!
It was my guide, my light, my all,It bade my dark foreboding cease;And through the storm and danger's thrallIt led me to the port in peace.
Now safely moored, my perils o'er,I'll sing first in night's diadem,For ever and for evermoreThe Star, the Star of Bethlehem!"
John Brown.