1899.] on Epitaphs. 29 



words without any thought at all, which at present divide into two 

 equally deluded schools of poetry a large section of our contem- 

 poraries : — 



Mourn rather for that holy Spirit 



Sweet as the Spring, as Ocean deep ; 



For Her who, ere her Summer faded, 



Has sunk into a breathless sleep. 



Mrs. Hemans was only forty when she died. 



Among English epitaphs expressing nothing hut tender domestic 

 feeling, one of the best I have met with is in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, 

 in memory of a young lady belonging to the Lucy family. I will 

 not quote it because by not doing so, I may conceivably lead some one 

 in my audience to visit that most interesting church in which Cromwell 

 was married and Milton buried. 



There is a very pretty epitaph, a little too long to quote, in 

 Shepperton churchyard, which has been published by Dr. Garnett, 

 on a child of Mr. Peacock, of Crochet Castle celebrity — a man of 

 many and strangely diverse gifts, novelist and naval constructor, 

 examiner of correspondence at the India Office and operatic critic, 

 poet in the most approved manner of the later eighteenth century, 

 and in the most approved manner of the earlier nineteenth century — 

 equally successful in such compositions as his very beautiful ' Love 

 and Age,' and in describing a whitebait dinner at Blackwall in 

 Homeric Greek. I remember his once presenting me with such a 

 curious tour-de-force. 



Very striking, and in the highest degree characteristic, is the 

 epitaph to be read at Mentone on the grave of Mr. Green the his- 

 torian : — 



He died learning. 



It carries one's thoughts to the admirable motto cited, amongst 

 many not less good, by a man who, whatever we may think of his 

 political activity, certainly lived up to it — the Prussian General 

 Eadowitz : — 



Disce ut semper vieturus 



Vive ut eras moriturus. 



Learn as if you were to live for ever, 

 Live as if you were to die to-morrow. 



One of the best epitaphs of the perfectly simple kind which I 

 ever chanced to light upon is, or was a generation ago, in a church- 

 yard adjoining the ruined church of Gamrie in the extreme north-east 

 of Scotland. It was on one of those large slabs which were once nmch 

 affected by the wealthier peasantry in that district and consisted of 

 simply two lines. At the top of the stone were the words : — 



The night is far spent, 

 And at the bottom : — 



The day is at hand. 



