I am aware that, in thus tracing the course of my townsman, I lay myself open to a charge of fanaticism. I shall venture, however, on committing myself still further. One night, towards the close of last autumn, I visited the old chapel of St. Regulus. The moon, nearly at full, was riding high overhead in a troubled sky, pouring its light by fits, as the clouds passed, on the grey ruins, and the mossy, tilt-like hillocks, which had been raised ages before over the beds of the sleepers. The deep, dark shadows of the tombs seemed stamped upon the sward, forming, as one might imagine, a kind of general epitaph on the dead, but inscribed, like the handwriting on the wall, in the characters of a strange tongue. A low breeze was creeping through the long withered grass at my feet; a shower of yellow leaves came rustling, from time to time, from an old gnarled elm that shot out its branches over the burying-ground--and, after twinkling for a few seconds in their descent, silently took up their places among the rest of the departed; the rush of the stream sounded hoarse and mournful from the bottom of the ravine, like a voice from the depths of the sepulchre; there was a low, monotonous murmur, the mingled utterance of a thousand sounds of earth, air, and water, each one inaudible in itself; and, at intervals, the deep, hollow roar of waves came echoing from the caves of the distant promontory, a certain presage of coming tempest. I was much impressed by the melancholy of the scene. I reckoned the tombs one by one. I pronounced the names of the tenants. I called to remembrance the various narratives of their loves and their animosities, their joys and their sorrows. I felt, and there was a painful intensity in the feeling, that the gates of death had indeed closed over them, and shut them out from the world for ever. I contrasted the many centuries which had rolled away ere they had been called into existence, and the ages which had passed since their departure, with the little brief space between--that space in which the Jordan of their hopes and fears had leaped from its source, and after winding through the cares, and toils, and disappointments of life, had fallen into the Dead Sea of the grave; and as I mused and pondered--as the flood of thought came rushing over me--my heart seemed dying within me, for I felt that, as one of this hapless race, vanity of vanity was written on all my pursuits and all my enjoyments, and that death, as a curse, was denounced against me. But there was one tomb which I had not reckoned, one name which I had not pronounced, one story which I had not remembered. I had not thought of the tomb, the name, the story of that sleeper of hope, who had lived in the world as if he were not of the world, and had died in the full belief that because God was his friend, death could not be his enemy. My eye at length rested on the burial-ground of the Lindsays, and the feeling of deep despondency which had weighed on my spirits