་ ing servility, when their tyrants, out of mere wantonness, or to increase their riches, already super-abundant, or to gratify their boundless ambition, or for a feather, if there is the appearance of honour attached to that feather, send them to murder and be murdered, to gratify the pride of aristocracy. O' what madness! what folly! what weakness! what stupidity! that a whole people should suffer an individual villain, or a government of them, to lead them to the field of battle to be slaughtered, as a butcher leads a flock of sheep to the shambles; and yet at the same time be despised and hated by these same villains. One would suppose such men to be irrational, who would engage to murder the innocent for a morsel of bread; and at the command of a royal fool, or an imperial knave. Even death cannot repress the insolence of aristocratical pride; witness the exit of that lordly debauchee, the duke of Rutland; who, I believe, died in despair, cursing God with his last breath: yet I saw his superb coffin exhib ited in the parliament house, while thousands beheld with apparent reverential awe, the noble lump of clay. I saw his funeral, which appeared more like a farce; upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand of the wondering, cheated multitude, attended the pompous procession, through streets lined with soldiers. Let us follow him to Westminster Abbey, and we shall recognize a thousand golden lies. The superb statues, the sculptured urns, the gaudy escutcheons, and the flattering eulogiums on each monumental stone, are all a practical comment on the words of Solomon, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." I will be bold to affirm, that there are the remains of more honourable, virtuous, and ingenious individuals, in one corner of the poorest and most obscure church-yard in England, than in all Westminster Abbey! with all its pompous mausoleums, coats of arms, and magnificent sculpture, which too often compliments the memory of the most wicked and worthless of mankind. Even Gray's "Elegy, written M in a Country Church-Yard," (which I scarcely ever read, without contrasting the state of the virtuous poor with that of the vicious rich, with a melancholy pleasure) will illustrate the above sentiment: "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight, Save where the beetle wields his droning flight, Save that, from yonder ivy mantled tow'r, Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke; How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke?. Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye proud! impute to these the fault, Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd Or wak'd to ecstacy the living lyre. But knowledge to their eyes her ample page. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear, Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast, Th'applause of list'ning senates to command, Their lot forbad; nor circumscrib'd alone The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, With incense kindled at the muse's flame. Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect Their name, their years, spelt by th'unletter'd muse, For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, |