Every one has
been struck with repugnant melancholy in the city church-yard, where
tomb presses against tomb, and multitude in death destroys identity,
saving where the little greatness of wealth or rank may provide itself a
separate railing or an overtopping urn. Even in the more suggestive
solitude of the country, one cannot but contrast the few hillocks here
and there carefully weeded, and their trained and tended rose-bushes,
with the many more neglected and sunken, whose distained stones the
brier-tangle half conceals, and whose forget-me-nots have long since
died for want of water. One may even muse unprofitably (despite the
moralist) in our picturesque cemeteries, and as unprofitably in those
abroad, with their crowds of crosses and monotony of immortal wreaths.
In fact, whether on grounds philosophical or religious, it is not good
to brood on mortality for itself alone; better rather to recall the
living past, and in the living present prepare for the perfect future.
None die to be forgotten who deserve to be remembered. Even the fame for
which some are ardent to sacrifice their lives, enjoyed early at that
crisis of existence we call _success_, will in most cases change the
desire for renown into a necessity, and stimulate the mind to the lowest
motive but one, ambition,--possibly, to emulation, the lowest of all.
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