and irreparable disappearance of the dead in the funeral fire, so
crushing to the spirits, as he for one had found it, had long since
induced in him a preference for that other mode of settlement to the
last sleep, as having something about it more home-like and hopeful,
at least in outward seeming. But whence the strange confidence that
these "handfuls of white dust" would hereafter recompose themselves
once more into exulting human creatures? By what heavenly alchemy,
what reviving dew from above, such as was certainly never again to
reach the dead violets?-- [101] Januarius, Agapetus, Felicitas;
Martyrs! refresh, I pray you, the soul of Cecil, of Cornelius! said
an inscription, one of many, scratched, like a passing sigh, when it
was still fresh in the mortar that had closed up the prison-door.
All critical estimate of this bold hope, as sincere apparently as it
was audacious in its claim, being set aside, here at least, carried
further than ever before, was that pious, systematic commemoration of
the dead, which, in its chivalrous refusal to forget or finally
desert the helpless, had ever counted with Marius as the central
exponent or symbol of all natural duty.

The stern soul of the excellent Jonathan Edwards, applying the
faulty theology of John Calvin, afforded him, we know, the vision of
infants not a span long, on the floor of hell. Every visitor to the
Catacombs must have observed, in a very different theological
connexion, the numerous children's graves there--beds of infants, but
a span long indeed, lowly "prisoners of hope," on these sacred
floors. It was with great curiosity, certainly, that Marius
considered them, decked in some instances with the favourite toys of
their tiny occupants--toy-soldiers, little chariot-wheels, the entire
paraphernalia of a baby-house; and when he saw afterwards the living
children, who sang and were busy above--sang their psalm Laudate