e dread path once trod;
Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high,
And bids 'the pure in heart behold their God.'

This epitaph has much of what we have demanded; but it is debased in
some instances by weakness of expression, in others by false
prettiness. 'She bow'd to taste the wave, and died.' The plain truth
was, she drank the Bristol waters which failed to restore her, and her
death soon followed; but the expression involves a multitude of petty
occupations for the fancy. 'She bow'd': was there any truth in this? 'to
taste the wave': the water of a mineral spring which must have been
drunk out of a goblet. Strange application of the word 'wave' and
'died': This would have been a just expression if the water had killed
her; but, as it is, the tender thought involved in the disappointment of
a hope however faint is left unexpressed; and a shock of surprise is
given, entertaining perhaps to a light fancy but to a steady mind
unsatisfactory, because false. 'Speak! dead Maria, breathe a strain
divine'! This sense flows nobly from the heart and the imagination; but
perhaps it is not one of those impassioned thoughts which should be
fixed in language upon a sepulchral stone. It is in its nature too
poignant and transitory. A husband meditating by his wife's grave would
throw off such a feeling, and would give voice to it; and it would be in
its place in a Monody to her memory; but if I am not mistaken, ought to
have been suppressed here, or uttered after a different manner. The
implied impersonation of the deceased (according to the tenor of what
has before been said) ought to have been more general and shadowy.

And if so fair, from vanity as free,
As firm in friendship and as fond in love;
Tell them--

These are two sweet verses, but the word 'fair' is improper; for
unquestionably it was not intended that their title to receive this
assurance should depend at all upon their personal beauty. Moreover in
this couplet and in what follows, the long suspension of the sense
excites the expectation of a thought less common than the concluding
one; and is an instance of a failure in doing what is most needful and
most difficult in an epitaph to do; namely to give to universally
received truths a pathos and spirit which shall re-admit them into the
soul like revelations of the moment.

I have said that this excellence is difficult to attain; and why? Is it
because nature is weak? No! Where the soul has b