Yet in the grave. Years have rolled away. Successors to my chair sleep in the stony sepulchres around me. Monks whom I have awed or blessed, slumber in death. Men, whom I have known not, walk in the cloisters I have built. I am but mentioned as a thing that was--the memory of a name. Enough. There is no communion among the dead. Methought the spirits of the other world held converse on the joys they left on earth. But all is still. I cannot hear a lament, even for a rotted bone. The dead are tongue-tied. In yonder chancel sleeps a monarch, murdered by bloody relations. Should not such a spirit shriek aloud for vengeance, or weep a wailing for his destiny? But all is still. I hear no night owl screech. Earth is the only dwelling place of noise. Death knows it not. Methinks a shriek were music, a sigh were melody, a groan a feast. But no. Time has almost used me to its sombre sameness. Is not time tired to have gone so long the same unchanging course? I cannot move. My joints are aching with continued rest. I cannot turn:--my sides are sunken in. Would I could turn and crush them into bones with my reclining weight. Is my heart sinful that it weighs down all my body. Is this the gnawing and undying worm? Is THIS TO BE DEAD. * * * * * Six hundred years and still I am in the tomb. So much of man has sought a refuge in the grave. I well may ask if life is yet on earth. Has man degraded or is England ruined! I hear the footsteps of those that gaze upon the stony sepulchres. I feel the glaring of their curious eyes between the crevices which time has uncemented. They make remarks. Is then a tomb a monument of wonder? They talk of monks as things that are no more. Then is the world no more. At last the time is come. They lay their iron hand upon the stone. They knock, they knock. Hark! It rings through the giant isles till the echo thrills with joy. They knock the stony cerement that enshrines me. Great Heaven! I thank thee! Used as I am become to my hollow narrowness, I shall rejoice to quit it. The lid upraises. I feel the air. I feel the air. Now, now, let me rise. I feel myself prepared. Ah! the boots fall off. I shall ascend. The boots fall off. What are there none to raise me? See, they grin. Am I not come unto the resurrection of the life? What! that horrid lid again. O, no, no. They stifle me again. They fasten me to sleep--to sleep--to sleep. THIS, THIS IS TO BE DEAD. P.S. * * * * * NOTES OF A READER WILLS, _Abridged from Powell's Advice to Executors, (just published.)_ _Queen Consort._--An ancient perquisite belonging to the Queen Consort was, that on the taking of a _whale_ on the coasts, it should be divided between the King and Queen; the head only becoming the King's property, and the tail the Queen's. The reason of this whimsical distinction, as assigned by our ancient records, was to furnish the Queen's wardrobe with whalebone.