In advanced stages of society, and no where more than in England at this time, the tendency of all things is to weaken the relations between parent and child, and frequently to destroy them, reducing human nature in this respect nearer to the level of animal life. Perhaps the greater number of male children who are “born into the world” in our part of it, are _put out_ at as early an age, proportionally, as the young bird is driven from its nest, or the young beast turned off by its dam as being capable of feeding and protecting itself; and in many instances they are as totally lost to the parent, though not in like manner forgotten. Mr. Allison never saw all his children together after his removal from London. The only time when his three sons met at the Grange, was when they came there to attend their father's funeral; nor would they then have been assembled, if the Captain's ship had not happened to have recently arrived in port. This is a state of things more favorable to the wealth than to the happiness of nations. It was a natural and pious custom in patriarchal times that the dead should be gathered unto their people. “Bury me,” said Jacob, when he gave his dying charge to his sons,—“bury me with my fathers, in the cave that is in the field of Machpelah, which is before Mamre in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field of Ephron the Hittite, for a possession of a burying place. There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife; there they buried Isaac and Rebecca his wife; and there I buried Leah.” Had such a passage occurred in Homer, or in Dante, all critics would have concurred in admiring the truth and beauty of the sentiment. He had buried his beloved Rachel by the way where she died; but although he remembered this at his death, the orders which he gave were that his own remains should be laid in the sepulchre of his fathers. The same feeling prevails among many, or most of those savage tribes who are not utterly degraded. With them the tree is not left to lie where it falls. The body of one who dies on an expedition is interred on the spot, if distance or other circumstances render it inconvenient to transport the corpse; but however long the journey, it is considered as a sacred duty that the bones should at some time or other be brought home. In Scotland, where the common rites of sepulture are performed with less decency than in any other Christian country, the care with which family burial-grounds in the remoter parts are preserved, may be referred as much to natural feeling, as to hereditary pride.