The excellent Baxter and other pious men of his day deprecated in all sincerity and earnestness the growing disbelief in witchcraft and diabolical agency, fearing that mankind, losing faith in a visible Satan and in the supernatural powers of certain paralytic old women, would diverge into universal skepticism. It is one of the saddest of sights to see these good men standing sentry at the horn gate of dreams; attempting against the most discouraging odds to defend their poor fallacies from profane and irreverent investigation; painfully pleading doubtful Scripture and still more doubtful tradition in behalf of detected and convicted superstitions tossed on the sharp horns of ridicule, stretched on the rack of philosophy, or perishing under the exhausted receiver of science. A clearer knowledge of the aspirations, capacities, and necessities of the human soul, and of the revelations which the infinite Spirit makes to it, not only through the senses by the phenomena of outward nature, but by that inward and direct communion which, under different names, has been recognized by the devout and thoughtful of every religious sect and school of philosophy, would have saved them much anxious labor and a good deal of reproach withal in their hopeless championship of error. The witches of Baxter and "the black man" of Mather have vanished; belief in them is no longer possible on the part of sane men. But this mysterious universe, through which, half veiled in its own shadow, our dim little planet is wheeling, with its star worlds and thought-wearying spaces, remains. Nature's mighty miracle is still over and around us; and hence awe, wonder, and reverence remain to be the inheritance of humanity; still are there beautiful repentances and holy deathbeds; and still over the soul's darkness and confusion rises, starlike, the great idea of duty. By higher and better influences than the poor spectres of superstition, man must henceforth be taught to reverence the Invisible, and, in the consciousness of his own weakness, and sin, and sorrow, to lean with childlike trust on the wisdom and mercy of an overruling Providence,—walking by faith through the shadow and mystery, and cheered by the remembrance that, whatever may be his apparent allotment,—
"God's greatness flows around our incompleteness;
Round our restlessness His rest."
It is a sad spectacle to find the glad tidings of the Christian faith and its "reasonable service" of devotion transformed by fanaticism and credulity into superstitious terror and wild extravagance; but, if possible, there is one still sadder. It is that of men in our own time regarding with satisfaction such evidences of human weakness, and professing to find in them new proofs of their miserable theory of a godless universe, and new occasion for sneering at sincere devotion as cant, and humble reverence as fanaticism. Alas! in comparison with such, the religious enthusiast, who in the midst of his delusion still feels that he is indeed a living soul and an heir of immortality, to whom God speaks from the immensities of His universe, is a sane man. Better is it, in a life like ours, to be even a howling dervis or a dancing Shaker, confronting imaginary demons with Thalaba's talisman of faith, than to lose the consciousness of our own spiritual nature, and look upon ourselves as mere brute masses of animal organization,—barnacles on a dead universe; looking into the dull grave with no hope beyond it; earth gazing into earth, and saying to corruption, "Thou art my father," and to the worm, "Thou art my sister."
HAMLET AMONG THE GRAVES.
[1844.]
AN amiable enthusiast, immortal in his beautiful little romance of Paul and Virginia, has given us in his Miscellanies a chapter on the Pleasures of Tombs,—a title singular enough, yet not inappropriate; for the meek- spirited and sentimental author has given, in his own flowing and eloquent language, its vindication. "There is," says he, "a voluptuous melancholy arising from the contemplation of tombs; the result, like every other attractive sensation, of the harmony of two opposite principles,—from the sentiment of our fleeting life and that of our immortality, which unite in view of the last habitation of mankind. A tomb is a monument erected on the confines of two worlds. It first presents to us the end of the vain disquietudes of life and the image of everlasting repose; it afterwards awakens in us the confused sentiment of a blessed immortality, the probabilities of which grow stronger and stronger in proportion as the person whose memory is recalled was a virtuous character.
"It is from this intellectual instinct, therefore, in favor of virtue, that the tombs of great men inspire us with a veneration so affecting. From the same sentiment, too, it is that those which contain objects that have been lovely excite so much pleasing regret; for the attractions of love arise entirely out of the appearances of virtue. Hence it is that we are moved at the sight of the small hillock which covers the ashes of an infant, from the recollection of its innocence; hence it is that we are melted into tenderness on contemplating the tomb in which is laid to repose a young female, the delight and the hope of her family by reason of her virtues. In order to give interest to such monuments, there is no need of bronzes, marbles, and gildings. The more simple they are, the more energy they communicate to the sentiment of melancholy. They produce a more powerful effect when poor rather than rich, antique rather than modern, with details of misfortune rather than titles of honor, with the attributes of virtue rather than with those of power. It is in the country principally that their impression makes itself felt in a very lively manner. A simple, unoruamented grave there causes more tears to flow than the gaudy splendor of a cathedral interment. There it is that grief assumes sublimity; it ascends with the aged yews in the churchyard; it extends with the surrounding hills and plains; it allies itself with all the effects of Nature,—with the dawning of the morning, with the murmuring of wind, with the setting of the sun, and with the darkness of the night."
Not long since I took occasion to visit the cemetery near this city. It is a beautiful location for a "city of the dead,"—a tract of some forty or fifty acres on the eastern bank of the Concord, gently undulating, and covered with a heavy growth of forest-trees, among which the white oak is conspicuous. The ground beneath has been cleared of undergrowth, and is marked here and there with monuments and railings enclosing "family lots." It is a quiet, peaceful spot; the city, with its crowded mills, its busy streets and teeming life, is hidden from view; not even a solitary farm-house attracts the eye. All is still and solemn, as befits the place where man and nature lie down together; where leaves of the great lifetree, shaken down by death, mingle and moulder with the frosted foliage of the autumnal forest.
Yet the contrast of busy life is not wanting. The Lowell and Boston Railroad crosses the river within view of the cemetery; and, standing there in the silence and shadow, one can see the long trains rushing along their iron pathway, thronged with living, breathing humanity,—the young, the beautiful, the gay,—busy, wealth-seeking manhood of middle years, the child at its mother's knee, the old man with whitened hairs, hurrying on, on,—car after car,—like the generations of man sweeping over the track of time to their last 'still resting-place.
It is not the aged and the sad of heart who make this a place of favorite resort. The young, the buoyant, the light-hearted, come and linger among these flower-sown graves, watching the sunshine falling in broken light upon these cold, white marbles, and listening to the song of birds in these leafy recesses. Beautiful and sweet to the young heart is the gentle shadow of melancholy which here falls upon it, soothing, yet sad, —a sentiment midway between joy and sorrow. How true is it, that, in the language of Wordsworth,—