STROLL TO GRASSMERE.
SECOND SAUNTER.
It is yet only ten o'clock—and what a multitude of thoughts and feelings, sights and sounds, lights and shadows, have been ours since sunrise! Had we been in bed, all would have remained unfelt and unknown. But, to be sure, one dream might have been worth them all. Dreams, however, when they are over, are gone, be they of bliss or bale, heaven or the shades. No one weeps over a dream. With such tears no one would sympathise. Give us reality, "the sober certainty of waking bliss," and to it memory shall cling. Let the object of our sorrow belong to the living world, and, transient though it be, its power may be immortal. Away then, as of little worth, all the unsubstantial and wavering world of dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, so much the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like this, where all is steadfast but the clouds, whose very being is change, and the flow of waters that have been in motion since the Flood.
Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by her elated husband, a high-born beautiful and graceful bride. They are making a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled her horns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, here it is—youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love—all united in ties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other—the blissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came to admire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can see only one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother, and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself—every one—that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virgin youthhood. With her, as with Genevieve—
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame!"
And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No—it will fade, and fade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like the shortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of the light, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnal twilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know not how great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth, and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die.
Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all such occasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that of wedded life it may generally be said,
"O, happy state, where souls together draw,
Where love is liberty, and nature law!"
What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, and religion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul! And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divine dispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play within bosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between them the cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good must flourish under that holy necessity—everything foul and bad fade away; and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrims travelling together through time to eternity, whether their path lead through an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to be gracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that very reason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and if the present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in rapture as it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice to them whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the past and future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulge tempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so? How much tranquillity and contentment in human homes! Calm onflowings of life shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out into the open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautiful resignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away—yet without and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not an unhappy lot—The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as if they were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in the gloom—The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearly dried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven—Children, those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as the glades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in the mother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether without relief—for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now in the bowers of heaven.
Reverse the picture—and tremble for the fate of those whom God hath made one, and whom no one man must put asunder. In common natures, what hot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference, disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting to madness, lies in that mean but mighty word—Temper! The face, to whose meek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, shows now but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape of those features is still fine—the eye of the gazelle—the Grecian nose and forehead—the ivory teeth, so small and regular—and thin line of ruby lips breathing Circassian luxury—the snow-drifts of the bosom still heave there—a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping from the chariot of the sun—nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veil beneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend—a devil incarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made your house a hell.
But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homely wife—or one comely at the best—nay, even that you have sought to secure your peace by admitted ugliness—or wedded a woman whom all tongues call—plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame like the sun in miniature on the front of your house—but what Joint-Stock Company can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetual singeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze up without warning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire? We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantly contradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure, at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine at home every day for a month, she wonders why nobody asks you out, and fears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine from home one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted to tavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention—there is hatred and sorrow in house-bills—rent and taxes are productive of endless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing—indeed quite a fortune in itself—especially to a poor Scotsman going to England, where all the people are barbarous—yet is it irritatingly expensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawky hoydens and hobbletehoys are getting themselves accomplished in the foreign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, and the dumb-bells.
"Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind from China to Peru,"
(two bad lines, by the way, though written by Dr Johnson)—and observation will find the literature of all countries filled with sarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and ballads especially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous misery and discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns—the dilemma of English wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, of every individual hour of every individual day, and so on, has its peculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yet the delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing, and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger—marrying and giving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career of prosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere about every thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth—double houses become villages—villages towns—towns cities—and our Metropolis is itself a world!
While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach against wedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion that leads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over the mean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious of the same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary's bosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under a fate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawful embrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselves spring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and the weak fall—bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright as the day—fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its broken heart—hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding to despair—crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase of appetite, grows by what it feeds on—wide, but unseen, over all the regions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy, dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge—beseechings, seductions, suicides, and insanities—and all, all spring from the root of Love; yet all the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as time endures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage, of which every other golden globe is poison and death.
Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thou young and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tears to those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smile can ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England also the high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity and religion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure and unpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, mayst thou be, as the dove in the sunshine on the Tower-top—and as the dove serene, when she sitteth on her nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood!
Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquainted with your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects to gaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Of yourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the pretty white-washed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine with each other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower. Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be there pathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes. Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you will disappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woody wildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and a glimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is best society, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels or voyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attained in little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is an incident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet of nature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song—and of the hearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweet the cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears by far the most beautiful place in all the Lake-country. You buy a field—build a cottage—and in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you to sit) beneath the shadow of your own trees!
In an English village—highland or lowland—seldom is there any spot so beautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, with the pensive shadows of the old church-tower settling over its cheerful graves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as too strong—for the pigeons are cooing in the belfry, the stream is murmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on the mounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead. But hark! the bell tolls—one—one—one—a funeral knell, speaking not of time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial—and close to the wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave.
Hush! The sound of singing voices in yonder wood, deadened by the weight of umbrage! Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now all is silence—but the pause speaks of death. Again the melancholy swell ascends the sky—and then comes slowly along the funeral procession, the coffin borne aloft, and the mourners all in white; for it is a virgin who is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncovered while the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy rites along the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. A smothered sobbing disturbeth not the service—'tis a human spirit breathing in accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for the immortal—Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven.
Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing finger from a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lost all their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the sole delight of her greyhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joy extinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness been beloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor her heart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? All that we know is her name and age—you see them glittering on her coffin—"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years"!
The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back to Ambleside; and although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerous than before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must not indulge too long in a mournful mood—yet let us all sit down under the shadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay of Rydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears.
Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives for ages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which genius has allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leaves heart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed have well been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks now almost like a fallen wall—at best, the remnants of a cattle-shed shaken down by the storm.
Thirty years ago—how short a time in national history—how long in that of private sorrows!—all tongues were speaking of the death that there befell; and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that the funeral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd on the hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows not even their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It was inhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, known familiarly in her own small world by the name of Lucy of the Fold. In almost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiar pride—some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, and whose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority of mind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object of attraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unending year. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished her thirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness, often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Her parents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why they should dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so many regarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, but as fond too of her nest; and when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life was almost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadness, and from sadness to joy; from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like that of the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creature wavering in the sunshine over the wood-top—was to Lucy as welcome a change as the change of lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in the mountain-country of her birth.
One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house, and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if they would let him have lodging with them for a few months—a single room for bed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family. Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did ever creature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world of imagination. He had come into the free mountain region from the confinement of college walls, and his spirit expanded within him like a rainbow. No eyes had he for realities—all nature was seen in the light of genius—not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All was beautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded in the soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends, colleges, cities—all sunk away into oblivion, and Harry Howard felt as if wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyond the sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfect and endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to a spirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In that cottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books in all languages; and there was much wondering talk over all the countryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at the Fold.
Every day—and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts among the hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyes—and every hour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr Howard was, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but none doubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had ever conversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so bland and free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injured the humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy of the Fold. It was indeed even so—for, before the long summer days were gone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slept on the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none—indeed, scarcely one near relation—although he was rich in this world's riches, but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature had lavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed of the splendid but wayward youth—and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him, were it even to some savage land. Thus the Fold became to him the one dearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple ongoings of that humble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all the rough or coarser edges of lowly life were softened away in the light of genius that transmuted everything on which it fell; while all the silent intimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hut as fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spirit pre-eminently lovely, and chained it to the hearth, around which was read the morning and the evening prayer.
What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of very impossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be in place of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till in a new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away, perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creature will have the soul of a very angel—and then, before God and at His holy altar, mine shall she become for ever—here and hereafter—in this paradise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise of heaven."
Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in the change, imperceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought on Lucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcely could her parents believe it was their same child, except that she was dutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiar objects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had now grown to woman's stature—tall, though she scarcely seemed so except when among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling, and far more than fulfilling, the fair promise of her childhood. Never once had the young stranger—stranger no more—spoken to daughter, father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towards Lucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, which was almost pity—an affection that was often sad—wonder at her surpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of its power—admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meet instruction as if already formed—and that heart-throbbing that stirs the blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in the twilight through smiles or through tears,—these, and a thousand other feelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, now constituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook him when he was alone among the mountains.
At last it was known through the country that Mr Howard—the stranger, the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much, but whom everybody loved, and whose father must at the least have been a lord, was going—in a year or less—to marry the daughter of Allan Fleming—Lucy of the Fold. O, grief and shame to the parents—if still living—of the noble Boy! O, sorrow for himself when his passion dies—when the dream is dissolved—and when, in place of the angel of light who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowly born, and long rudely bred—a being only fair as many others are fair, sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, and partaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown to herself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one to rescue them from such a fate—from a few months of imaginary bliss, and from many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming be so infatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who would soon desert her broken-hearted? Yet kind thoughts, wishes, hopes, and beliefs prevailed; nor were there wanting stories of the olden time, of low-born maidens married to youths of high estate, and raised from hut to hall, becoming mothers of a lordly line of sons, that were counsellors to Kings and Princes.
In Spring, Mr Howard went away for a few months—it was said to the great city—and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride. They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were still together. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath he would be at the Fold. A few fields in Easdale, long mortgaged beyond their fee-simple by the hard-working statesman from whom they reluctantly were passing away, had meanwhile been purchased by Mr Howard, and in that cottage they were to abide, till they had built for themselves a house a little further up the side of the sylvan hill, below the shadow of Helm-crag. Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return and its golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was to descend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of living things.
Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun; and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic pass of the Hawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose as lustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnight hour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached the cliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning in the low window, the very planet of love. It seemed to shed a bright serenity over all the vale, and the moon-glittering waters of Rydal-mere were as an image of life, pure, lonely, undisturbed, and at the pensive hour how profound! "Blessing and praise be to the gracious God! who framed my spirit so to delight in His beautiful and glorious creation—blessing and praise to the Holy One, for the boon of my Lucy's innocent and religious love!" Prayers crowded fast into his soul, and tears of joy fell from his eyes, as he stood at the threshold, almost afraid, in the trembling of life-deep affection, to meet her first embrace.
In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then in another moment, he saw, through the open door of the room where Lucy used to sleep, several figures moving to and fro in the light, and one figure upon its knees—who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed he became one of the pale-faced company—and there he beheld her on her bed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorable beauty—eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead, dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he fell down in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor.
Encircled with arms that lay round him softer and silkier far than flower-wreaths on the neck of a child who has laid him down from play, was he when he awoke from that fit—lying even on his own maiden's bed, and within her very bosom, that beat yet, although soon about to beat no more. At that blest awakening moment, he might have thought he saw the first glimpse of light of the morning after his marriage-day; for her face was turned towards his breast, and with her faint breathings he felt the touch of tears. Not tears alone now bedimmed those eyes, for tears he could have kissed away; but the blue lids were heavy with something that was not slumber—the orbs themselves were scarcely visible—and her voice—it was gone, to be heard never again, till in the choir of white-robed spirits that sing at the right hand of God.
Yet no one doubted that she knew him—him who had dropt down, like a superior being, from another sphere, on the innocence of her simple childhood—had taught her to know so much of her own soul—to love her parents with a profounder and more holy love—to see, in characters more divine, Heaven's promises of forgiveness to every contrite heart—and a life of perfect blessedness beyond death and the grave. A smile that shone over her face the moment that she had been brought to know that he had come at last, and was nigh at hand—and that never left it while her bosom moved—no—not for all the three days and nights that he continued to sit beside the corpse, when father and mother were forgetting their cares in sleep—that smile told all who stood around, watching her departure, neighbour, friend, priest, parent, and him the suddenly distracted and desolate, that in the very moment of expiration she knew him well, and was recommending him and his afflictions to the pity of One who died to save sinners.
Three days and three nights, we have said, did he sit beside her who so soon was to have been his bride; and come or go who would into the room, he saw them not—his sight was fixed on the winding-sheet, eyeing it, without a single tear, from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking up to heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably long without food, so did he—and so he would have done, on and on to the most far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, he never rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he never slept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunderstorm, the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed that he heard it not—and during the floods of next day, to him the roaring vale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people—for now they seemed to be old—wept to see him sitting still beside their dead child; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office, and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenly alighted on the face of the corpse—and then off—and on—and away—and returning—was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty in its corruption. "Ha—ha!" starting up, he cried in horror—"What birds of prey are these, whom Satan has sent to devour the corpse?" He became stricken with a sort of palsy—and, being led out to the open air, was laid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf, where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat, building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life.
The company assembled—but not before his eyes—the bier was lifted up and moved away down the sylvan slope, and away round the head of the Lake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied, here and there, as it passed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound of psalms—but he saw—he heard not;—when the last sound of the spade rebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by—but all the while he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmen at his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage of the Fold was as if she had never been born—for she had vanished for ever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguished in the dust.
Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in his eyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of a reasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or in what part of the earth, yet, when left by himself, he never sought to move beyond the boundaries of the Fold. During the first faint glimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and over many times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she was dead—then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleep had fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate—then with groans too affecting to be borne by those who heard them, he would ask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, her husband, in life; and finally, and last of all, he imagined himself in Grassmere Churchyard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which it was evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours and hours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes all at once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting-fits returned, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone-dead. As for his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms, little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposed that one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days be alive—yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun did that body die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks of Rydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passing like a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage in Palestine, even beneath the shadow of Mount Sion, and was laid, with a lock of hair—which, from the place it held, strangers knew to have belonged to one dearly beloved—close to his heart, on which it had lain so long, and was to moulder away in darkness together, by Christian hands and in a Christian sepulchre.