I sometimes think the funeral rites and cemeteries of a people best characterize its piety. Contrast the modern with the primitive grave-yards,--their funeral services so dismal, doleful, despairing: as if their faith in immortality were fittest clad in sables, and death were a descent of souls, instead of an ascension. What fairer views of life and of immortality our fresher faith exhibits. Verdure, cheerful marbles, tasteful avenues, flowers, simple epitaphs, inscriptions celebrating the virtues properly humane. What in the range of English lyric verse is comparable to Wordsworth's ode, entitled Intimations of Immortality in Childhood, or his prose Essay on Epitaphs. Nor is the contrast so disparaging between these and Pagan moralities. Christianity can hardly add to the sweetness and light, the tenderness, trust in man's future well-being, shown in Plutarch's consolatory Letter to his Wife on the death of his little daughter. One becomes more Christian, even, in copying it. PLUTARCH TO HIS WIFE--ALL HEALTH. "As for the messenger you dispatched to tell me of the death of my little daughter, it seems he missed his way as he was going to Athens. But when I came to Tanagra I heard of it by my niece. I suppose by this time the funeral is over. I wish that whatever happens, as well now as hereafter, may create you no dissatisfaction. But if you have designedly let anything alone, depending upon my judgment, thinking better to determine the point if I were with you, I pray let it be without ceremony or timorous superstition, which I know are far from you. Only, dear wife, let you and me bear our affliction with patience. I know very well, and do comprehend what loss we have had; but if I should find you grieve beyond measure, this would trouble me more than the thing itself; for I had my birth neither from a stock nor stone, and you know it full well; I having been assistant to you in the education of so many children, which we brought up at home under our own care. "This much-lamented daughter was born after four sons, which made me call her by your own name; therefore, I know she was dear to you, and grief must have a peculiar pungency in a mind tenderly affectionate to children, when you call to mind how naturally witty and innocent she was, void of anger, and not querulous. She was naturally mild and compassionate, to a miracle. And she showed delight in, and gave a specimen of, her humanity and gratitude towards anything that had obliged her, for she would pray her nurse to give suck, not only to other children, but to her very playthings, as it were courteously inviting them to her table, and making the best cheer for them she could. Now, my dear wife, I see no reason why these and the like things which delighted us so much when she was alive, should, upon remembrance of them, afflict us when she is dead. But I also fear, lest while we cease from sorrowing, we should forget her, as Clymene said:--