that border the walks of the maze. And this is like the inappreciable
difficulties that often beset us in life.

I will see it again before long, and get some additional record of it.


August 10th.--We went to the Isle of Man, a few weeks ago, where S-----
and the children spent a fortnight. I spent two Sundays with them.

I never saw anything prettier than the little church of Kirk Madden
there. It stands in a perfect seclusion of shadowy trees,--a plain
little church, that would not be at all remarkable in another situation,
but is most picturesque in its solitude and bowery environment. The
churchyard is quite full and overflowing with graves, and extends down
the gentle slope of a hill, with a dark mass of shadow above it. Some of
the tombstones are flat on the ground, some erect, or laid horizontally
on low pillars or masonry. There were no very old dates on any of these
stones; for the climate soon effaces inscriptions, and makes a stone of
fifty years look as old as one of five hundred,--unless it be slate, or
something harder than the usual red freestone. There was an old Runic
monument, however, near the centre of the churchyard, that had some
strange sculpture on it, and an inscription still legible by persons
learned in such matters. Against the tower of the church, too, there is
a circular stone, with carving on it, said to be of immemorial antiquity.
There is likewise a tall marble monument, as much as fifty feet high,
erected some years ago to the memory of one of the Athol family by his
brother-officers of a local regiment of which he was colonel. At one of
the side-entrances of the church, and forming the threshold within the
thickness of the wall, so that the feet of all who enter must tread on
it, is a flat tombstone of somebody who felt himself a sinner, no doubt,