in nature and humanity is but the miry road back to life, was not
unrecognized here; there was nothing of the hideous attempt to hide
death in the garments of life. The master walked about gently, now
stopping to read some well known inscription and ponder for a moment
over the words; and now wandering across the stoneless mounds,
content to be forgotten by all but those who loved the departed. At
length he seated himself on a slab by the side of the mound that
rose but yesterday: it was sculptured with symbols of decay--
needless surely where the originals lay about the mouth of every
newly opened grave, and as surely ill befitting the precincts of
a church whose indwelling gospel is of life victorious over death!

"What are these stones," he said to himself, "but monuments to
oblivion? They are not memorials of the dead, but memorials of the
forgetfulness of the living. How vain it is to send a poor forsaken
name, like the title page of a lost book, down the careless stream
of time! Let me serve my generation, and let God remember me!"

The morning wore on; the sun rose higher and higher. He drew from
his pocket the Nosce Teipsum. of Sir John Davies, and was still
reading, in quiet enjoyment of the fine logic of the lawyer poet,
when he heard the church key, in the trembling hand of Jonathan Auld,
the sexton, jar feebly battling with the reluctant lock. Soon the
people began to gather, mostly in groups and couples. At length
came solitary Miss Horn, whom the neighbours, from respect to her
sorrow, had left to walk alone. But Mr Graham went to meet her,
and accompanied her into the church.

It was a cruciform building, as old as the vanished monastery, and
the burial place of generations of noble blood; the dust of royalty