dignified, and renovate in every
heart those high hopes of religion which spring from, the grave of
former virtue.

All this delightful, this purifying illusion, is destroyed by the way in
which the monuments are collected in the Museum at Paris. They are there
brought together from all parts of France; severed from the ashes of the
dead they were intended to cover; and arranged in systematic order to
illustrate the history of the art whose progress they unfold. The tombs
of all the Kings of France, of the Generals by whom its glory has been
extended, of the statesmen by whom its power, and the writers by whom
its fame has been established, are crowded together in one collection,
and heaped upon each other, without any other connexion than that of the
time in which they were originally raised. The Museum accordingly
exhibits, in the most striking manner, the power of arrangement and
classification which the French possess; it is valuable, as containing
fine models of the greatest men whom France has produced, and exhibits a
curious specimen of the progress of art, from its first commencement to
the period of its greatest perfection; but it has wholly lost that deep
and peculiar interest which belongs to the monuments of the dead in
their original situation.

Adjoining to the Museum, is a garden planted with trees, in which many
of the finest monuments are placed; but in which the depravity of the
French taste appears in the most striking manner. It is surrounded with
houses, and darkened by the shade of lofty buildings; yet, in this
gloomy situation, they have placed the tomb of Fenelon, and the united
monument of Abelard and Eloise: profaning thus, by the barbarous
affectation of artificial taste, and the still more shocking imitation
of ancient superstition, the remains of those whose names are enshrined
in every heart which can feel the beauty of moral excellence, or share
in the sympathy with youthful sorrow.

How different are the feelings with which an Englishman surveys the
untouched monuments of English greatness!--and treads the floor of that
venerable building which shrouds the remains of all who have dignified
their native land--in which her patriots, her poets, and her
philosophers, "sleep with her kings, and dignify the scene," which the
rage of popular fury has never dared to profane, and the hand of
victorious power has never been able to violate; where the ashes of the
immortal dead still lie in undi