The implements of the trade of the deceased figure conspicuously upon the stone. A sculptured inkstand denotes a lawyer or scribe; an adze a carpenter; an anvil a blacksmith, and a lancet a barber or surgeon. A beheading or a hanging scene, is graphically portrayed on some tombstones. This astonishes civilized strangers who hold to the opinion that the least said touching those events in the life of one's ancestry, the better. But he finds on inquiry that the unfortunate Armenians in question were strangulated, or had their heads chopped off because their wealth had excited the cupidity of the reigning sovereign. Death by the sword or gibbet came in many cases to imply wealth in the luckless victim-and the Armenians with a pardonable pride-engrave those sanguinary emblems upon tomb-stones, as reflecting a glory upon surviving relatives.

One exquisitely beautiful feature about the Armenian tombstones (as well as those of the Turks and other Orientals), deserves universal imitation.

On the upper corner of each stone are two small cavities which the rains fill with water. The intention is to give drink to the thirsty birds, and thus invite them to take up their residence in the neighborhood, and by their sweet warblings, lend an added cheerfulness to the spot.

v.

The Rural Cemetery.

Ir makes "one in love with death," said Shelley, in allusion to the grave of his brother poet Keats, "to think one should be buried in so sweet a place." That grave was an humble one in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. It was marked by a simple marble slab. No cunning art-making beauty perennial, had added a grace to that grave; and yet it was beautiful. For it lay upon a gentle slope, amid the grass-grown ruins of the Honorian walls; and the sweet flowers-the violets and daisiesmingling with fresh herbage, sprang about it and folded it in their soft embrace the whole year long. How little did Shelley think, as he uttered those words, how soon he too would be buried in "so sweet a place," by the side of his gentle friend! And when the wild waves engulfed that passionate son of genius in the Bay of Spezia, may not his heart have been cheered, as he sank to his death amid the howling tempest, with the hope that his remains might be recovered and placed to rest in the spot he had loved so well. That wish was fulfilled, for,

although the body of the poor bard was placed upon a funeral pyre by the kind offices of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, when the waters, tired of sporting with their precious prey, had flung it on the shore, his ashes and all that remained of him were buried, just where he had wished, in the Protestant cemetery at Rome.

The thought of the poet is the thought of all mankind. The belief that our grave shall be in some dear, some cherished spot, hallowed by natural beauty, or still more hallowed by sweet and tender associations, robs death of many of its terrors. Keats, in the last waning hours of his disease, softly murmured, "I feel the flowers growing over me." It was no expression of a wandering intellect. He was already so near the grave that by a beautifully poetical imagination he fancied himself at peace within it and then, oh! then-it was such a consolation to think that the flowers, which had so gladdened his whole life and soothed, with a balmy presence, the weary days of his illness, were fragrantly blooming above him!

In a kindred spirit, but with a different turn of thought writes our own Bryant

"There through the long, long summer hours

The golden light should lie,

And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.

Nor would it brighten then for me

Nor its wild music flow;

But if around my place of sleep

The friends I love should come to weep
They should not haste to go:

Soft airs and song and light and bloom

Should keep them lingering by the tomb."

We wish that our bodies may be laid in some summery spot where the "flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine," not merely because the prospect of such a grave cheers the long aching perspective of sickness, but because we fondly believe that those who ever loved us will be attracted thither and kept lingering there by the "light and bloom" of nature.

It is these two consolatory sentiments-natural to the heart of man-that give such an inexpressible charm to rural cemeteries. The word " cemetory" is of Greek derivation and means a sleeping place. And though every spot where the dead are laid to rent is to them-in the christian's hope-a place of sleep; yet we cannot help associating the idea of perfect rest beneath the ground, with that of quiet and unprofaned solitude above it. The tranquil retreat for which we sigh, cannot be found in the midst of our great cities. A spiritual imagination, just about to lay off the armor of worldly conflict, to leave-gladly leave-the noisy battle of life forever, can find little consolation in the thought of a grave in some populous churchyard under the gloomy shadow of tall brick buildings devoted to business and pleasure, forever dissonant with the roar of streets, the oaths of the dissolute, the jar

ring discourse of traffic, the laugh and revel of the thoughtless crowd, with no room for pleasant alleys and walks, no space for benches where the mourner may sit and meditate upon the "loved and the lost," no sunlight struggling through the ghastly smoke of the city to shine upon the marble stone, and quicken the flowers which a fond hand has vainly planted in the sod, no fresh wind to come dancing from the meadow, bearing a thousand rifled sweets in its train, no warbling of birds that build their nests in the leafy seclusion of the cypress and cedar, no humming of bees "about the mossed head-stone," no fluttering of bright butterflies, whose escape from the chrysalis is one of the most beautiful and suggestive symbols of the resurrection from the dead-nothing to breathe a soft sweet requiem of nature's music to our memory, and nothing to invite the mourner to bend and lovingly weep above us. This last reflection is the most cruel and chilling one of all. Grief, like love, requires seclusion for its perfect utterance. It cannot brook the look of impertinent and heartless curiosity. It cannot kneel by a grave-it cannot water the ground with tears-it cannot lift up a prayer for the peace of the departed-it cannot draw a soothing sweetness from a communion with the sainted dead-while a living throng jostle noisily past or stop only to gaze with prying eyes upon the sight. The closest privacy is the condition that the sincerest grief most covets. It is meant for the eyes of God-not of man. Then, and then only does it bring a blessing from the skies-an exaltation, a