4^'' STUDIES OF NATURE. 



that fomethino; flill fubfills after we are gone ? 

 Did a toiTib fugged to their imagination only the 

 idea of what it is defigned to contain, that is, a 

 corpfe merely, the fight of it would fhock rather 

 than pleafe them. How afraid are moft of them 

 at the thought of death ! To this phyficat idea, 

 then, feme moral fentiment muft undoubtedly be 

 united. The voluptuous melancholy rcfulting 

 from it arife?, like every other attraftive fenfation, 

 from the harmony of the two oppofite principles ; 

 from the fentiment of our fleeting exiftence, and 

 ot that of our immortality ; which unite on be- 

 holding the lafh habitation of Mankind. A tomb 

 is a monument ereded on the confines of the two 

 Worlds. 



It firft prefen^s to us the end of the vain dif- 

 quietudes of life, and the image of everlafling re- 

 pofe : it afterwards awakens in us the confufed 

 fentiment of a bleffed immortality, the probabili- 

 ties of which grow ftronger and ftronger, in pro- 

 portion as the perfon vvhofe memory is recalled 

 was a virtuous charader. It is there fhat our ve- 

 neration fixes. And this is fo unqueflionably true, 

 that though there be- no difference between the 

 dufl of Nero and that of Socrates ^ no one would 

 grant a place in his grove to the remains of the 

 Roman Emperor, were they depofited even in a 

 filver urt^ ^ whereas every one would exhibit thofe 



of 



