Yes! O my God! You lift up and you cast down; you humble and you exalt the sons of men. You cut off the breath of princes, and are terrible to the kings of the earth. It is then we know your power, when, by the stroke of death, we feel what we are, that our life is but as a shadow that declineth, a vapor dispersed by the beams of the rising sun, or as the grass which loses at noon the verdure it had acquired from the morning dew. It is a truth of which we, are made sensible upon this mournful occasion, and in this sacred temple, where the trophies of death are displayed, and its image reflected on every side. The mournful accents of the solemn dirge, the sable drapery that lines these walls, the vestments of the ministers of the sacred altar, this artificial darkness which is a figure of the darkness of the grave;-- the tapers that blaze around the sanctuary to put us in mind that when our mortal life is extinct, there is an immortal life beyond the grave, in a kingdom of light and bliss reserved for those who walk on earth by the light of the gospel;--that tomb, in which the tiara and the sceptre, the Pontifical dignity, and the power of the temporal prince, are covered over with a funeral shroud,--every object that strikes the eye, and every sound that vibrates on the ear, is an awful memento which reminds us of our approaching dissolution, points out the vanity and nothingness of all earthly grandeur, and convinces, us that in holiness of life, which unites us to God and secures an immortal crown in the enjoyment of the sovereign good, consists the greatness as well as the happiness of man. An awful truth exemplified in many great characters, hurled from the summit of power and grandeur into an abyss of woe, whose unshaken virtue supported them under the severest trials, and whose greatness of soul shone conspicuous in their fall as well as in their elevation. A truth particularly exemplified in His Holiness Pope Pius VI., whose obsequies we are assembled to solemnize on this day--Pius VI. great in prosperity; Pius VI. great in adversity. When his life is written by an impartial hand, when his contemporaries are dead, when history lays open the hidden and mysterious springs of the events connected with his reign, and posterity erects a tribunal, at which it is to judge, without dread of giving offence, then his virtues and wisdom will appear in their true light, as the symmetry and proportion of those beautiful statues, which are placed in the porticoes or entrance of temples and public edifices, are better discovered, and seen to a greater advantage at a certain distance. * * * * *