That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, and the Barcan desert pierce,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save his own dashings—yet, the dead are there;
And millions in these solitudes, since first
The flight of years begun, have laid them down
In their last sleep: the dead reign there alone.”
Four millions of Egyptians cultivate the valley of the great river on whose banks, amidst the fertilizing dust of myriads of their progenitors, there are calculated still to exist, in a state of preservation, not less than from four hundred to five hundred millions of mummies. The “City of the Tombs” is far more populous than the neighboring streets even of crowded Constantinople; and the cemeteries of London and the catacombs of Paris are filled to overflowing. The trees which gave shade to our predecessors of a few generations back lie prostrate; and the dog and horse, the playmate and the servant of our childhood, are but dust. Death surrounds and sustains us. We derive our nourishment from the destruction of living organisms, and from this source alone.
And who is there among us that has reached the middle term of existence, that may not, in the touching phrase of Carlyle, “measure the various stages of his life-journey by the white tombs of his beloved ones, rising in the distance like pale, mournfully receding milestones?”