But there are two kinds of melancholy; or rather, we must not confound melancholy with gloom. Will the slight tenderness of sorrow which imparts a new charm to the fugitive pleasures of existence be inspired by those gloomy books which this age has attempted to bring into fashion; by those terrific and wild dreams in which hideous personages enact revolting scenes? Modern imagination has painted melancholy a tall and unearthly spectre enveloped in a winding sheet. The real traits of her countenance are those of innocence occupied in pleasant revery; and at the same time that tears are in her eyes, a smile dwells on her lips. It is the resort of a sterile imagination and a cold heart, to invest even the tomb with borrowed ideas of darkness; to wait for night in which to visit it; and to torment the fancy to people it with sinister phantoms. Real sensibility would not require such an effort to be awakened. It fills my mind with a pleasing sadness to wander in the church-yard, under the melancholy radiance of the moon, among monuments of white marble, and hear the night breeze sigh among the weeping willows. I am deeply affected with, here and there, a touching inscription.[52] I remember one in which a father says, that he has had five children, and that here sleeps the last that remained to him for consolation. In another, a father and mother announce that their daughter died at seventeen, a victim of their weak indulgence, and of the extravagant modes of the time. This sojourn of repose, these words written in the abodes of silence, which inspire tenderness for those that are no more, and those whose treasured affection still remembers them, always penetrate the soul with an emotion not without its charms. In the view of tombs, we immediately direct our thoughts to an internal survey of ourselves. I mark out my place among the peaceful mansions. I imagine the vernal grass and flowers reviving over my place of rest. My imagination transports me to the days which I shall not see, and sounds for me the soothing dirge of the adieus of friendship pronounced over the spot where I am laid.[53] I generally carry from my sojourn in these our last mansions, one painful sentiment. I remark that many tombs are raised by parents for their children; by husbands for their wives; by widows for their husbands. I observe that there are but few erected by children for their fathers. Perhaps it is right that love should ascend in that scale, rather than descend in the other.