Gray was laid in the same grave with his mother, "the careful, tender mother of many children, one alone of whom," as he wrote upon her gravestone, "had the misfortune to survive her." Their tomb--a low, oblong, brick structure, covered with a large slab--stands a few feet away from the church wall, upon which is a small tablet to denote its place. The poet's name has not been inscribed above him. There was no need here of "storied urn or animated bust." The place is his monument, and the majestic Elegy--giving to the soul of the place a form of seraphic beauty and a voice of celestial music--is his immortal epitaph. "There scatter'd oft, the earliest of ye Year, By hands unseen are showers of vi'lets found; The Redbreast loves to build & warble there, And little Footsteps lightly print the ground." There is a monument to Gray in Stoke Park, about two hundred yards from the church; but it seems commemorative of the builder rather than the poet. They intend to set a memorial window in the church, to honour him, and the visitor finds there a money-box for the reception of contributions in aid of this pious design. Nothing will be done amiss that serves to direct closer attention to his life. It was one of the best lives ever recorded in the history of literature. It was a life singularly pure, noble, and beautiful. In two qualities, sincerity and reticence, it was exemplary almost beyond a parallel; and those are qualities that literary character in the present day has great need to acquire. Gray was averse to publicity. He did not sway by the censure of other men; neither did he need their admiration as his breath of life. Poetry, to him, was a great art, and he added nothing to literature until he had first made it as nearly perfect as it could be made by the thoughtful, laborious exertion of his best powers, superadded to the spontaneous impulse and flow of his genius. More voluminous writers, Charles Dickens among the rest, have sneered at him because he wrote so little. The most colossal form of human complacency is that of the individual who thinks all other creatures inferior who happen to be unlike himself. This reticence on the part of Gray was, in fact, the emblem of his sincerity and the compelling cause of his imperishable renown. There is a better thing than the great man who is always speaking; and that is the great man who only speaks when he has a great word to say. Gray has left only a few poems; but of his principal works each is perfect in its kind, supreme and unapproachable. He did not test merit by reference to ill-formed and capricious public opinion, but he wrought according to the highest standards of art that learning and taste could furnish. His letters form an English classic. There is no purer prose in existence; there is not much that is so pure. But the crowning glory of Gray's nature, the element that makes it so impressive, the charm that brings the pilgrim to Stoke-Pogis church to