“The location of the spot is striking, The beauty of a thousand hills is centred here. Ah! And the Dragon coils around to guard it. A winding stream spreads vast and wide. Ah! And the egrets here collect in broods. Rest here in peace for aye. Ah! The sighing firs above will make you music. For ever rest in this fair city. Ah! Where pines and trees will come and cheer you.” Much more than that in which lies the tomb of Shelley is the situation of some of these Celestial graves fitted to make one “in love with death,” and there is much consoling in the thought which the Chinaman can entertain, that when the cold hand has stilled the beatings of the troubled heart, his disembodied spirit does not want a home, his name and memory are perpetuated in the ancestral hall, his wants are provided for, and the daughter whom he left a child feels that he is near her even to her old age. How different these convictions from the melancholy complaint of Abd-el-Rohaman, the Arab poet, as, fancying himself in the grave, forsaken and forgotten by all his kin, he wrote:— “They threw upon me mould of the tomb and went their way,— A guest, ’twould seem, had flitted from the dwellings of the tribe. My gold and my treasures, each his share, they bore away, Without thanks, without praise, with a jest and with a jibe. “My gold and my treasures, each his share, they bore away; On me they left the weight, with me they left the sin. That night within the grave, without hoard or child, I lay: No spouse, no friend was there, no comrade and no kin. “The wife of my youth soon another husband found; A stranger sat at home on the hearthstone of my sire; My son became a slave, though unpurchased, unbound, The hireling of a stranger who begrudged him his hire.” The Celestial does not regard death as the termination of delights or separation of companions, and he comforts himself with the thought that the affectionate wishes of all his kin will follow him into Dead Man’s Land, that he will there enjoy companionship, that his spirit may hover for ever over the village and the stream, reverenced to latest generations, influencing the fruitfulness of the all-nourishing earth, the sweep of the winds of heaven, and the courses of the life-giving streams. Until some better ideas be introduced, it would be a pity were this belief disturbed, as it exercises a powerful influence for good by leading the Chinese mind from things seen and temporal—for which it is apt to have too much respect—towards those which are unseen and eternal. It gives to his horizon the awe of another world, and has much effect in preserving those family relationships which lie at the foundation of Chinese social success. It also has a singular effect in consoling the bereaved, and