I turned.—The great fierce city extending as far as eye could reach—the sky fretted with her turrets and her spires—her thousand smokes rising and mingling with the o’erhanging-clouds;—as she rose above her bed of waters, with hoarse continuous roar, cried to me—“_Look not here, not here—for death!_” Her sister city, with her towers and cupolas—her grassy esplanades surmounted with verdant trees and far extending colonnades embowered in shrubbery,—from her high terraced walls, re-echoed the hollow roar—“_Not here for death!_” The island lay extended far before me—its farms and towns—its modest spires—its granaries—its verdant meadows—its rich cultivated fields—its woods—its lawns—all wrapped in silence, but still its whisper softly reached me—“_Not here—not here—is death!_”—E’en the great distant ocean, closed only from my view by the far-reaching horizon, in sullen continuous murmurs moaned—“_Not here is death!_” Where, then, I cried—_where, then, is death?_ I looked above me, and the blue vault hung pure and motionless—light fleecy clouds like angels on their journeys, alone resting on its cerulean tint,—around, the evening breeze played calm and gently,—and beneath the flowers and leaves were quivering with delight, while the incessant hum of insect life, arising from the earth with ceaseless voice, still cried—“_No—no—not here is death!_” Ah! said I, this beautiful world shall be forever, and there is—there is no death—but even as I spoke, a warning voice struck with deep solemnity upon my startled ear,—“Man that is born of woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.”—And as I turned, the funeral procession—its minister and its mourners passed onward in their journey with the silent dead. I looked after the retiring group, and again from beyond the coppice which intervened, heard rising in the same deep solemn tones,—“Write, from henceforth, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; even so saith the spirit, for they rest from their labours,”—and my soul cowered within itself like a guilty thing, as it said—Amen. I looked again upon the scene before me and sighed,—e’en such is human reason. That gorgeous sun shall set—the gay villas and verdant lawns,—the crowded shipping,—the beautiful bay with all that rest upon its bosom, shall soon be wrapt in darkness,—the gleaming watch-light disappear from yon tall battlement, as the bugle sounds its warning note,—the great fierce city be stilled in silence, while the beating hearts within her midnight shroud, like seconds, answer her tolling bells upon the dial of eternity,—and the insect myriads—the flowers and leaves—ay!—the great heavens themselves, shall from the darkness cry—“_This is the portraiture of death!_”—for the darkness and the silence are all that man can realize of death.