bare by the encroaching waves; and the niche in cathedral crypt,
or the vault under the church's floor. I cannot conceive anything
more irreverent than the American fashion of burying in unconsecrated
earth, each family having its own place of interment in the corner
of its own garden: unless it be the crotchet of the silly old
peer, who spent the last years of his life in erecting near his
castle-door, a preposterous building, the progress of which he
watched day by day with the interest of a man who had worn out all
other interest, occasionally lying down in the stone coffin which
he had caused to be prepared, to make sure that it would fit him.
I feel sorry, too, for the poor old Pope, who when he dies is laid
on a shelf above a door in St. Peter's, where he remains till the
next Pope dies, and then is put out of the way to make room for
him; nor do I at all envy the noble who has his family vault filled
with coffins covered with velvet and gold, occupied exclusively by
corpses of good quality. It is better surely to be laid, as Allan
Cunningham wished, where we shall 'not be built over;' where 'the
wind shall blow and the daisy grow upon our grave.' Let it be
among our kindred, indeed, in accordance with the natural desire;
but not on dignified shelves, not in aristocratic vaults, but lowly
and humbly, where the Christian dead sleep for the Resurrection.
Most people will sympathize so far with Beattie, though his lines
show that he was a Scotchman, and lived where there are not many
trees:--

Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down,
Where a green grassy turf is all I crave,
With here and there a violet bestrown,
Fast by a brook, or fountain's murmuring wave;
And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave!