Pere la Chaise is becoming, as the Place of Rest of the dead, worthy to hold the ashes of departed mortality. There the bodies of men can in no way be hurtful to the health of those who survive; there, now incapable of being useful, they are at least harmless to that community of which they lately formed a part. There the silence—the proper silence—of the tomb is maintained; there a serenity of aspect exists, which comports well with the solemn, the quiescent state of its inhabitants; and there is a cheerfulness, and a beauty, aye a brightness, of a softened, and a mellowed kind, which seem to refer to the pure enjoyments of the promised land. There, as in the burial-grounds situated in our thickly populated towns, there is no obvious and striking unwholesomeness, no offensive and humiliating appearance of mortal remains, to deter from a casual glance, or from entrance on the part of the friends and relatives of the departed. On the contrary, in Pere la Chaise, they are invited and allured by the softened and chastened beauty of the place, and there, without endangering their health from close and vitiated air, they linger by the ashes of the dead, and revolve those solemn thoughts, so wholesome and so heavenward bending to the soul;—there the bereft parent is seen giving the reins to his feelings, fondly recalling cherished associations, and there he is learning to hear unappalled that he must share a like fate with that of the object whose grave he now regards;—there may be seen the orphan, come to shed the tear of filial love over the manes of his departed parents, reviving ties and affections which are too liable to be entirely worn away by youthful enjoyment, and the various unsubstantial fascinations of the world;—and there he learns that most useful and wholesome lesson, to look with complacence, if not with prospective joy, on death and its silent abode,—to divest himself of that dread and horror often excited by these ideas, and which, alas, too frequently drive the young from such considerations altogether. In Pere la Chaise, a murmur is heard proceeding from the town, and the impression made upon the mind is, that the world is receding, that the noise, mirth, and tumult of man is vanishing away, and that, in short, the reign of death has commenced,—the reign of death, solemn but not terrific.