opular
compositions; they are like Turner's skies--they harass and fatigue,
leaving you certainly wondering at their difficulty, but, as certainly,
wishing they had been "impossible." There is to us more of touching
pathos, heart-thrilling expression, in some of the old psalm-tunes,
feelingly played, than in a whole batch of modernisms. The strains go
_home_, and the "fountains of the great deep are broken up"--the great
deep of unfathomable feeling, that lies far, far below the surface of
the world-hardened heart; and as the unwonted, yet unchecked, tear
starts to the eye, the softened spirit yields to their influence, and
shakes off the moil of earthly care; rising, purified and spiritualized,
into a clearer atmosphere. Strange, inexplicable associations brood over
the mind,

"Like the far-off dreams of paradise,"

mingling their chaste melancholy with musings of a still subdued, though
more cheerful character. How many glad hearts in the olden time have
rejoiced in these songs of praise--how many sorrowful ones sighed out
their complaints in those plaintive notes, that steal sadly, yet
sweetly, on the ear--hearts that, now cold in death, are laid to rest
around that sacred fane, within whose walls they had so often swelled
with emotion! Tell us not of neatly trimmed "cemeteries," redolent of
staring sunflowers, priggish shrubs, and all the modern coxcombry of the
tomb; with nicely swept gravel walks, lest the mourner should get "wet
on's feet," and vaults numbered like warehouses, where "parties may
bring their own minister," and be buried with any form, or no form, if
they like it better. No, give us the village churchyard with its sombre
yew-trees, among which

"The dial, hid by weeds and flowers,
Hath told, by none beheld, the solitary hours;"

its grassy hillocks, and mouldering grave-stones, where haply all record
is obliterated, and nought but a solitary "resurgam" meets the enquiring
eye; its white-robed priest reverently committing "earth to earth," in
sure and certain hope "of a joyful resurrection" to the slumbering clay,
that was wont to worship within the grey and time-stained walls, whence
the mournful train have now borne him to his last rest; while on the
ivy-clad tower fall the slanting golden beams of an autumnal sun, that,
in its declining glory, seems to whisper of hope and consolation to the
sorrowful ones, reminding them that the night of the tomb shall not
endure for ever, bu