981 The New Cemetery, Liverpool. cemetery, Liverpool, to which they were attended by thousands of his sorrowing countrymen, anxious to pay the last sad tribute of respect to the memory of an exalted personage, whose sterling abilities as a statesman, and whose public and private virtues as a man, have endeared him to the nation at large. For some days previous to the interment, the exertions of the gentlemen forming the committee, to give due effect to the ceremony, and to preserve order, were most active and unremitting, and the regulations adopted were calculated to produce the desired effect. Wednesday and Thursday, tickets were distributed by the committee to persons anxious to enter the precincts of the cemetery, and to have a closer view of the funeral ceremony. On To add solemnity to this afflictive event, on the morning of Friday, the church bells began to toll at an early hour, and continued until the mournful ceremony was brought to a termination. The shops also, and all the public offices, paid a similar token of respect to the memory of the deceased. Early in the morning, the weather was lowering in the extreme, and there were several heavy showers before the procession started. Numbers of people, however, who had assembled in the vicinity of the cemetery, kept their ground in despite of the rain. In the neighbourhood of the town-hall, the people congregated at an early hour, but many of them dispersed on account of the unfavourable state of the weather. About nine o'clock, the individuals, carriages, &c., intending to join the procession, began to assemble in the area of the Exchange, Water-street, and Dale-street; and the gentlemen of the committee were actively engaged from an early hour in the morning, in the town-hall, where the body was deposited, in expediting the preliminary arrangements. In consequence of the delay, arising from the unfavourable state of the weather, the procession did not move till a quarter past ten o'clock. The weather cleared up about the time fixed for starting, and remained fine until the conclusion of the ceremony. The number of carriages was limited, as it was wished by the committee to render the procession one of pedestrians. There were in all twenty-two carriages and pairs, and four mourning coaches with four horses in each.-The following was the order of the procession : Two Mutes, on horseback. Gentlemen dressed in mourning, 164 lines, six abreast. The Committee, four abreast. Twenty-eight Clergymen. Two Mutes. 982 General Huskisson, Captain Huskisson, Lord Colville, Lord Granville, Mr. Littleton, M.P. Mr. Wainewright, Mr. Milne, and the Rev. W. Cockburn. The State Carriage of the Mayor, closed. Gentlemen, six abreast, 42 lines. The procession was closed by nine carriages. The procession, which swelled as it proceeded, was calculated, by a competent judge, to contain upwards of sixteen hundred gentlemen in mourning. Outside of the railings within which the procession moved, it has been calculated that there were upwards of 60,000 spectators between the exchange and the cemetery. We shall not guess at the number of persons within the cemetery. Every place which afforded standing room was occupied, and it is supposed that there were from twenty to thirty thousand persons looking on or endeavouring to get a sight of the ceremony. One signal gun was fired when the body was put into the hearse, at the town-hall, and another when the corpse entered the gates of the cemetery. When the procession arrived at the cemetery, the great majority of the gentlemen who formed it descended through the arch into the lower ground, where they took their stand on the gravel walks, whilst about 150 of the party, including the committee, clergymen, and some of the gentlemen connected with the press, entered with the corpse into the Grecian chapel, where the funeral ceremony was performed with great solemnity and effect by the Rev. Jonathan Brooks. The reading of the burial service occupied about twelve minutes; after which the committee, elergy, and those who were admitted into the chapel, moved out, and, descending the stone archway, repaired slowly and solemnly to the burying ground The Officiating Clergyman, the Rev. Jon. below, in the centre lawn. The sight from this place, looking upwards, was peculiarly striking. When the Rev. Mr. Brooks commenced that part of the funeral service which is delivered at the grave, the hats of thousands of the spectators were instantly removed, and all eyes were bent with intense interest towards the spot where the mutilated remains of their late esteemed representative were about to be consigned to their last home. Those who were stationed near the grave were evidently much affected by the closing scene; and one of the chief mourners, (General Huskisson) bedewed the grave of his lamented brother with tears, which never ceased to flow from the commencement to the close of this painful scene. At the conclusion of the melancholy and imposing ceremony, another gun was fired; the procession then left the ground, and the assembled thousands around dispersed, after paying the last sad tribute of respect to the memory of the deceased. Liverpool having given an example to the nation, both in theory and practice, of forming a public cemetery, in which the wealthy and the poor may lie down together, London has taken the hint, and designs have been drawn for a grand metropolitan burying place. Nothing, however, has yet been effectually done. The spot is still to be selected. Hampstead Heath, and Primrose Hill, near Camden Town, have both been mentioned; but funds must be raised, and many obstacles removed, before a work of such gigantic magnitude can be undertaken. In the plans now exhibited at the Royal Repository, Charing-cross, an enormous pyramid is the principal figure that strikes the eye. The description accompanying it, represents the whole to be intended as a progressive work, proportionate to the annual demand for burial. When finished, it is calculated to be capable of containing five millions of human beings. It will be larger in dimensions than the great pyramid of Egypt, simple in form, curious in arrangement, and truly sublime in effect. Its area will be surrounded by a terrace walk, enclosed by a wall thirteen feet high. The ground within this enclosure, from the wall to the base of the pyramid, is to be tastefully laid out for private tombs and monuments, in the style of the famous cemetery of Pere la Chaise, near. Paris. Should this work ever attain completion on the magnificent scale now in contemplation, it will be to the metropolis an object of superlative grandeur, veneration, and solemnity, being consecrated to sepulchral silence, and the decomposition of the dead. 984 The interment of the dead in churches and chapels frequented by the living, and in contracted grounds, surrounded by a dense population, though sanctioned by custom, and rendered venerable by age, cannot fail to prove injurious to health, by polluting the atmosphere which all must inhale. In nearly every large town, these evils exist, and are to be deplored. The noble example set by Liverpool, we hope, will be influential on other places besides London. The honour of imitation may be enjoyed by all, but this, instead of diminishing, will augment the lustre of the humane and enterprising spirit which gave the first public cemetery birth. THE SEPARATION. By Rev. J. Young.. "Oh what is death?-Tis life's last shore, “Он, what a change will not a few hours effect!" sighed out an almost brokenhearted female, as she paced, with hurried steps and agonized feelings, little short of maniacal, her lonely chamber. "This last wrench has climaxed my sufferings, and given the final stab to my already shattered peace." She pressed one hand to her throbbing forehead, and, with the other, drew forth her handkerchief, and wiped away the tears of agony which rolled down her pale cheek, and then, sinking into a chair, unable longer to restrain the almost choaking grief under which she laboured, exclaimed, in sorrow's deepest tone, "0 my own, my dear, dear Eustace, are we indeed torn from each other for ever?" Nature sunk beneath its own violent emotions, and the delicate frame of the devoted Laura fainted under it. Laura was the youngest daughter of a gentleman of family in the north of Scotland, whose residence was at the foot of a lofty ridge of mountains, called the Pentland Hills, which rise about four miles west of Edinburgh, and extend a considerable distance towards the western boundary of Mid-Lothian. Here the gentle Laura resided with her widowed father, and, by her assiduities and sprightly intelligence, formed the principal source of the enjoyment which he knew. The house which they occupied stood in a retired situation. A small green plat, with two or three waving poplars, filled the front premises, which were the extreme prospect, except a very | limited view of distant scenery on the right, and a still less extent of a public road leading into the town, on the left. Yet, more than this, Laura wished not. She had, at a period when most females possess the greatest measure of hilarity of spirits, sunk into a degree of pensiveness, except on some extraordinary and brief occasions, which produced a species of distaste to society. She had experienced no ordinary shock at the loss of her mother, and such a mother as few, comparatively, have known; she was such a one, as few, possessing almost an infinitely less degree of sensibility than Laura did-who, in fact, was all sensibility-could have lost, without deeply deploring her. The wound which her mind from this circumstance had received, was yet unhealed, when another, laceratingly painful, was inflicted on it; and inflicted, too, by the hand of a dastard, who ought to have shielded her from another pang, even at the hazard of his own existence. But he had not soul enough to know her worth, or the craven spirit which he displayed would have been exchanged for the noble and unbending conduct of a man of truth and honour. Such conduct, because of its frequency and consequences, deserves all the reprehension which the strongest language can express. The miscreants are pests to society, and should be scouted from it. Freezing pity, and burning execration, are sooner or later their wretched possession. 44 From these repeated attacks, acting powerfully on a delicate constitution, and a class of feelings so finely strung, that, like the Æolian harp, which sends forth plaintive music at the softest breeze, trembled at every touch; she writhed beneath mental throes of the most violent character; and hence too it was, that a melancholy tinge foreign to her natural temperament-had infected her, making the quiet seclusion of the family dwelling to possess more charms for her, than all the gay scenes of London, Venice, or Paris could have afforded. Here, day after day, and week after week, the mourning Laura brooded over her sorrows and her wrongs. Her wrongs! Yes, her wrongs 1-but she conceived not so of them; her kind and noble nature thought of them by another, by a milder name-for, she was used to say, "I cannot disesteem that which I once loved." The chief and almost only pleasures she now enjoyed arose from the interest which she took in affording instruction to some few children of the poor around her, and occa 986 sionally visiting the chamber of sickness, or the abodes of want and wretchedness. That gracious Being, however, whose "tender mercies are over all his works," and who delights not in the unhappiness of any of his creatures, marked with compassion her "life-sapping" sorrow; and, at the moment when the bereavement and disappointment which she had met with, were pressing upon the very vitals of her existence, and threatening speedy death, He, in the order of His providence, brought her acquainted with one, whose union of spirit with her own, and similarity of circumstances in some of their darkest shades, through which she had passed, not only tended greatly to rouse her languid powers, but threw around her path, once more, some of the fascinations of life, bringing, gradually and by degrees, into full play, those vivid sensibilities of her nature, which she had hastily imagined were destroyed for ever. A variety of circumstances, perfectly natural, and yet equally unforeseen and unexpected, brought them frequently together. A nameless something, in the habits and spirit of Eustace, led the sympathizing Laura to conceive that some blighting affliction had produced a reservation, bordering on gloominess, in her friend, which elicited from her, numberless acts of kindness, the result of friendship in its purest character. What, indeed, may have been the circumstances of Eustace, even conjecture has not developed. Whatever they might have been, it was fully evident to the searching eye and sensitive solicitude of Laura, they had been of a rough and destructive character, and that was sufficient with her to produce a strong desire in her mind to serve him. Retiring as Eustace was in his general habits, and cold and distant as were even his civilities, if he possessed any, still he was far from being indifferent to the kind sympathies of the attentive Laura; and as he became gradually acquainted with her history, he felt no less a measure of sympathy for her, and a desire to alleviate her sorrows, than she had experienced towards himself. Time rolled on, and every passing period rendered the interviews of Eustace and Laura more pleasurable to each. Eustace became a favourite with her father, and a frequent visitor at their retired dwelling. Friendship of the purest, most disinterested and lofty kind, possessed each of them, and in the exercise of that sacred feeling, they strove to advance each other's best in terests. Kind solicitudes for the mutual welfare 987 The Separation. 988 of each other, and their endeavours to pro- | lay a rich and extensive valley, in the bed mote it, were not uselessly employed. The advice and exhortations of Eustace were rendered salutary to the mind of Laura, while the counsel and kindness of Laura did not become less beneficial to Eustace. | In their experience, the imaginings of the poet found the substance it had airily conceived of, while the cold and insincere formalities of professing friends, might have been fired by its contemplation, or have been made to blush at its comparison. Time rolled on, and still their friendship grew, without either knowing, or even conceiving, that a softer passion might possibly succeed. If the thought might at any time occur to them, Laura believed it impossible on her own part, while Eustace even dreaded its existence. Each possessed, in the company of the other, all they wished to enjoy, and all, they knew, they could possess. Laura had lately, in company with a young lady of her acquaintance, visited an interesting invalid, a few miles from home. For two years she had been gradually, but perceptibly, sinking; and now, was fast hastening to that home "where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest." A request had been made by her parents, through Laura's friend, that Eustace would likewise visit her: to this request he cheerfully consented; and, in company with the ladies, he walked to the house of affliction. It was a fine evening, towards the latter end of May, when the party set forth on their errand of Christian love; and, as they walked onwards, the beauty of the scenery, the charms of nature, and the goodness of Him from whom cometh every good and every perfect gift, intermingled with remarks relative to piety, of an individual and practical character, occupied their thoughts, and furnished them with abundance of the most interesting matter for conversation, until they reached the house. The situation of the place was most romantic. The house stood on a level spot, more than half way down a deep glen, and was surrounded by some ninety or hundred acres of rich pasture and meadow land, every part of which was now in a high state of cultivation. The visitors had already reached the brow of the lofty hill which rose above the dwelling, and were gently proceeding, when Eustace, who was an enthusiastic admirer of nature, in all her varied forms, stood still, to gaze awhile on the wide and fascinating prospect which was spread before him. On their right, and partly before them, of which, winding in serpentine forms, flowed a beautiful river. Occasionally its waters were hid behind jutting plots of land, and then, again, broke forth to the sight, looking like a rich mirror embossed in a frame of emerald, as the sun rested upon its surface, and the sloping pastures hemmed it in on either side. Here and there, as if to relieve the eye, and give a picturesque effect to the scenery, a rustic bridge was discovered, spanning the stream, and forming a medium of communication to the several inhabitants of the country. In the front distance, a vast extent of hilly country stretched as far as the eye could extend its power of vision, while some rude and precipitous chasms, and abrupt and lofty acclivities, diversified the view. On the left, a portion of unequal land was terminated by a dark copse of fir, birch, and oak trees, growing on the side and summit of another hill, even loftier than that on which Eustace and his companions stood. A humble dwelling or two graced different parts of the scene, and lower down the valley, in the extreme prospective, a few scattered houses, with a glittering village kirk spire, might be discovered. Not a cloud stood in the heavens. The sun gave a gorgeous brilliancy to every object, while a cooling breeze played round the tops of the mountains, giving a cheering freshness to the atmosphere. Eustace was enraptured. Again and again, he pointed out the objects as they rose before him to Laura; and then, with emotions which could not be expressed, feeling the sublime language of Thomson, mentally exclaimed, God is ever present, ever felt, Come then, expressive silence, muse His The party moved on, and soon reached the habitation of the invalid. The ladies entered, and Eustace followed. There sat a form, wasted by slow consumption, which had once been lovely, and which even now retained some relics of former beauty. A deep hectic flush played upon her cheeks, her lips were of an ashy paleness, and her dim eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. Occasionally, a distressing cough seemed to tear her shattered system, while her faint and tremulous voice was scarcely audible. Immediately opposite the place where she sat, stood a rude sort of sofa, which she had occasionally used as such, on which to rest her weak frame. There, Laura took her seat with her companion; while Eustace drew a chair close to the youthful sufferer, and strove to instruct and comfort her. The sinfulness of human nature, the atonement of the Saviour, and the way to God through faith in that blood, were the things upon which by turns he dwelt. Tears flowed plentifully from the sinking penitent's eyes, as he spoke to her, and exhibited the cheering evidences of the Saviour's mercy, and expatiated on the peace and happiness of a better world. He then took the Holy Scriptures, and read from its sacred contents, and afterwards in solemn prayer commended her to God. During the period that Eustace was hanging over the invalid, and pointing out to her the way of salvation, the eye of Laura was fixed upon him with unmoving attention; she listened with an interest beyond what she had ever before experienced. At times a silent tear stole down her cheek, and told the powerful feelings of her mind. At length, unable longer to contain her emotions, she rose, and walked out by herself into a small paddock, which lay through a little garden adjoining the house, and there gave uncontrolled vent to her feelings. Eustace had marked her grief, and now observed her departure. After waiting with anxiety for her return, he felt alarmed at her absence, and walked out to seek her. It was some time, however, before he could ascertain the way she had taken. At length he discovered her at a distance, evidently almost overcome by the feelings under which she laboured. He instantly passed hastily through the garden towards her. She turned, and, seeing him approaching, motioned with her hand for him to go back. With reluctance he obeyed, and, entering again the house, made such an apology for her as seemed necessary, and, shortly afterwards, with Laura's female friend, bade its inhabitants farewell, and hasted to join her. The road by which they returned was in another direction from that by which they came. A lofty hill lay before them. Laura leaned on Eustace's arm, as they ascended, while her female companion, like a bounding roe, skipped on before them. They gained the summit, and again gazed with admiration on the gorgeous scenery. But, while they gazed and commented on its beauties, a distressing conviction seized the mind of Laura, that they 990 should no more visit that spot in company. This she expressed to Eustace, upon whose mind, a class of emotions of the most crushing influence, descended with the intelligence. They passed on. The angle of a copse was crossed by them; a narrow pass required Eustace's assistance-it was given ;-every touch, every look, was now thrillingly felt. Their friend was still skipping on in front of them, through a scented field of clover flower. They still followed, and as they passed, a declaration, chaste as it was sincere, met the ear of Laura, while a reciprocity of feeling was experienced and expressed. Time rolled on,-and still their affection grew, when an unexpected circumstance arose, and pointed to a period, not far distant, when, that which to each of them appeared but as the prelude of death, SEPARATION! must take place. The effect produced upon the constitution of Eustace was not less deep and destructive, although less perceptible, than on the delicate frame of Laura. The time drew rapidly on, with, in appearance to them, unusual celerityone day only intervened when the painful farewell sound was to be heard. That day they walked again over the ground which they had before walked in company, and, for the last time, visited some spots on which memory had affixed a signet never to be obliterated. The shades of evening gathered-night came on-the last chaste embrace was given their hands seemed unable to let go their hold of each otherbut they parted. The adieu was felt, rather than heard. They parted for ever! Morning dawned again, but not as formerly for Eustace and Laura. He took one, long, agonizing, look at her window, and then rushed to the conveyance which was to bear him far, far away from her who was dear to his heart, and, "Midst earth's gay millions lov'd alone." The distress of mind under which Laura had laboured, during the hours of the past night, had so far overcome her, that her enfeebled system was sunk in profound sleep at the time of Eustace's departure: but when at length the oblivious influence of slumber wore off, she awoke to all the anguish of a mind to which, now, no earthly specific could be applied. She arose, and as the painful conviction pressed upon her, that every passing moment bore Eustace still farther and farther from her, an agony almost insupportable was borne by her. She looked back to the past evening, to the comparative happiness she enjoyed while in his company, and then, dwelling once |