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LETTER IX.

WELL, it certainly is an immense advantage to rise early if you are much engaged in business, you evidently gain that which is of so much importance, -time; and this is often, not only as valuable as so much money, but enables you to get through the various engagements of the day with comfort: it also enables you to participate in various enjoyments, which are out of the reach of those who rise only just in time to begin the day's business; again, if you are an idle man, and a man of pleasure, early hours prolong good health, and are especially valuable, as inviting you to enjoy your own society, and at the same time to improve yourself, by withdrawing, in a degree, from the busy, bustling, careless world, and fixing your attention upon things of a higher and more important character.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt

In solitude, where we are least alone;

A truth which through our being then doth melt,

And purifies from self

BYRON.

So it has been with me this morning. My West India habits being still upon me, I was up long before my friend or his servants, and the morning being fine, fresh, and inviting, I took the liberty of letting myself out of the front door, and wended my way across the village, till I came upon the church-yard; I know not how it is, but there is something pleasing and soothing in a church-yard: most people, I believe, find it so; one might have thought that it would be rather a melancholy place, and therefore to be avoided but I have often observed that most people select the church-yard for a stroll, when they have a few spare moments on hand, in a strange place; travellers often occupy very the few minutes that the change of horses give them, at the different stages, in making a little tour of the consecrated spot, where the former inhabitants of the village sleep; some perhaps are led thither by mere idle curiosity, just to see the place some seek information as to the healthiness of the neighbourhood, by the ages recorded on the stones :-by-the-way, Dr. Babbington the elder, used to tell of a hard hit he received in a church-yard, one day from a country lad whom he addressed, after observing that the ages recorded on the stones were all very great;-" Healthy place this, my lad," said the doctor.

"Why yees, pretty well for that."
"Who's the doctor?"

"There ain't none."

"Indeed! why what do folks do when they get

ill?"

"Oh, they dies o' theyselves."

Perhaps it was acting upon this hint that the worthy doctor upon being upset in a chaise, and a good deal hurt, exclaimed, upon hearing some one talk of sending for a surgeon,-" No, no, pray do no such thing, I'm hurt bad enough already.”

Well, to return; some probably go expecting to find the church-yard prettily situated, and commanding some fine views, and they are not often disappointed even in England, the situations of the churches and their surrounding grounds, are very generally the best in the neighbourhood, and this is still more strikingly the case on the continent, especially in Switzerland, where many of the churchyards command the most magnificent views, as at Vevey, Berne, &c. Some, again, probably are attracted to the region of the tombs, from a sense that "this is not our home," and that the grave is not only the lot of all flesh, but the path through which lies the entrance to eternity and to rest:-to those mansions in the kingdom of their Father, where is

peace for evermore," and where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”

There is an exceedingly pleasing paper of Addison's, in the first volume of the Spectator, on the subject of church-yard cogitations; he says-" I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy imaginations but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy, and can therefore take a view of nature in her deep

:

and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones; by this means I can improve myself with those objects which others consider with terror.

"When I read in Westminster Abbey the several dates upon the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries and make our appearance together."

Upon the present occasion I came upon the churchyard unintentionally and unexpectedly, as I was wending my way towards the sea shore: it arrested my steps on many accounts, first, the beauty of the situation struck me, especially as the sun was just throwing his first rays upon the fine old elm-trees which occupy one corner of the yard, and giving new lustre to the large dew-drops which hung heavily upon the luxuriant grass amongst the tombs. The old church itself, looked peaceful and contented, as it lay sheltered beneath a huge rocky eminence, emblematical of that "rock of ages," beneath whose sheltering side the spiritual church seeks, and never fails to find, protection :-commanding also a view, and pointing attention, as it were, to the ocean,—

That glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form

Glasses itself in tempests in all time,

Calm or convulsed,-in breeze, or gale, or storm,

Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime-
The image of eternity-the throne

Of the Invisible.

Childe Harold, Canto iv.

The view, indeed, is partially obstructed by the rich foliage of the intervening trees, and the eye is led to wander over the luxuriant park lands which intervene, and to be fixed upon the massive buildings of Tor Abbey, which tell of wealth and comfort, and ease, and pleasure: and thus the attention is withdrawn from the image of eternity, and fixed upon the nearer objects, as, but too often, the mind is attracted and fixed upon objects of time, to the utter neglect and oblivion of those of eternity;-strange, strange infatuation and weakness this, yet how few of us but must plead guilty to it.

It is interesting I think to trace the system of compensation which pervades all the dealings and ordinances of God respecting man, though here, as in many other things, we see "as through a glass, darkly." Could we read the history of those who occupy a single church-yard, I have no doubt that we should be able fully to recognise and appreciate the system. But even without such a power, how very interesting it is to peruse the records on the tombstones, especially in old church-yards. I could not help thinking as I strolled amongst the more ancient tombs on the present occasion, (for the yard having been enlarged at different periods, they occupy a distant part of it), that here the lines of Gray were particularly applicable,

"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”