Lonsdale churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and
folded morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike of these, and of the
dead who have left these for other valleys and for other skies, a
group of schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to
strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the words of
the dead that would teach us, and strike them far from us with our
bitter, reckless will; little thinking that those leaves which the
wind scatters had been piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon
the seal of an enchanted vault--nay, the gate of a great city of
sleeping kings, who would awake for us and walk with us, if we knew
but how to call them by their names. How often, even if we lift the
marble entrance gate, do we but wander among those old kings in
their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and stir the crowns
on their foreheads; and still they are silent to us, and seem but a
dusty imagery; because we know not the incantation of the heart that
would wake them;--which, if they once heard, they would start up to
meet us in their power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and
consider us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly
fallen, saying, "Art thou also become weak as we--art thou also
become one of us?" so would these kings, with their undimmed,
unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art thou also become pure and
mighty of heart as we--art thou also become one of us?"

Mighty of heart, mighty of mind--"magnanimous"--to be this, is
indeed to be great in life; to become this increasingly, is, indeed,
to "advance in life,"--in life itself--not in the trappings of it.
My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head
of a house died? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in
his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses; and each of
them placed him at his table's head, and all feasted in his