صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT STREET;

BELL AND BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH; SMITH AND SON, GLASGOW
AND CUMMING, DUBLIN.

1838.-

R

971823

LONDON:

IBOTSON AND PALMER, PRINTERS, SAVOY STREET, STRAND.

[blocks in formation]

IN the village of Howth there is a little ruin of four walls, encompassing a churchyard. Like almost all similar places in Ireland, and we may add in England, this humble receptacle for the dead is allowed to be overrun with foul grass and weeds, and encumbered with rubbish -evidences of neglect on the part of the living towards the memory of deceased friends, which tells nothing for a theory of abiding affections in human nature, and which, to the eyes of any one who has noticed cemeteries in other countries, is particularly disagreeable. Notwithstanding its unsightly state, the little churchyard of which we speak was, however, when we last saw it, an impressive spot. You turned into it, out of the small bustle of the village, through an open door-way, or rather breach in one of its walls, and were alone in a moment with the silent but eloquent ashes of the "rude forefathers" of the living creatures so near you. If the wind blew fair for the purpose, the noise of the sea also reached you, sounding melancholy upon your ear, and hoarsely whispering a sympathetic tale of effort, and swell, and force, incessantly dashed into non-existence. The antiquity of the crumbling walls of the ruin assisted these impressions; and from the topmost branches of a tall and flourishing ash-tree in one of its corners, came now and then the still-accordant cawing of two rooks who had nested there.

It was a bleak September evening in the memorable year 1798, that a young person, advancing from the sea-coast through the streets of Howth, approached in the twilight this little burying-place. As he walked along at a quick pace, his glances to either side and behind him implied that kind of watchfulness of others which arises from a wish that others should not watch us. It would not have been surprising, however, if curious eyes turned to observe him, for his appearance was in itself unusual among the humble community of the village, while the circumstance of his coming alone, and a stranger, at such an hour of the evening, into such a neighbourhood, might have caused additional remark. He was a young man of about three-andSept. 1838.-VOL. XXIII.—NO. LXXXIX.

B

« السابقةمتابعة »