The breeze of the declining March day blew keenly, as I strode across the extensive fields towards the old burial-ground of Kildinan, in the county of Cork. On reaching the ancient church, I rested on the broken bank that enclosed the cemetery, to contemplate the scene before me, and pause upon the generations of men that have been impelled along the stream of time towards the voiceless ocean of eternity, since the day on which an altar was first erected on this desolate spot, in worship of the Deity. The most accurate observer would scarcely suppose that this enclosure had ever been a place of interment, save that certain little hillocks of two or three spans long, and defined by a rude stone, were scattered along its surface. To a fanciful imagination these would seem to have been the graves of some pigmy nation, concerning which tradition had lost all remembrance. But the little sepulchres were the resting-places of unfortunate babes that die in the birth, or but wake to a consciousness of life--utter the brief cry of pain, and sleep in death for ever. These unbaptized ones are never permitted to mingle with Christian clay, and are always consigned to these disused cemeteries. With this exception, the old churchyard had long ceased to receive a human tenant, and its foundation could scarcely be traced beneath the rank grass. The father of the present proprietor of the land had planted the whole space with fir-trees, and these flourishing in the rich soil formed by decomposed human bodies for many a foot beneath, have shot up to an unusual size, and furnish a proof that even in death man is not wholly useless, and that, when his labour is ended, his carcase may fertilize the sod impoverished by his greedy toil. In these tall firs a colony of rooks had established their airy city, and while these young settlers were building new habitations, the old citizens of the grove were engaged in repairing the damage their homes had received from the storms of winter; and the shrill discordant voices of the sable multitude seemed to mock the repose of them that occupied the low and silent mansions beneath.