iX.] MELA^'CHOLY HOURS. 363 



That glory's voice is impotent to pierce 

 The silence of the tomb ! but virtue blooms 

 Even en the wrecks of life, and mounts the skies f 

 So gird thy loins with lowliness, and walk 

 With Cowper on the pilgrimage of Christ. 



This inscription is faulty from its length, but if a 

 painter cannot get the requisite eifect at one stroke, he 

 must do it by many. The laconic style of epitaphs is the 

 most difficult to be managed cf any, inasmuch as most is 

 expected from it. A sentence standing alone on a tomb 

 or a monument, is expected to contain something parti- 

 cularly striking ; and when this expectation is disap- 

 pointed, the reader feels like a man who, having been 

 promised an excellent joke, is treate-d with a stale conceit 

 or a vapid pun. The best specimen of this kind, which 

 I am acquainted with, is that on a French general : 



" Sii<te, Viator; Htroem cakas .'" 

 Btop, traveller ,• thou treadest on a Iicro / 



MELANCHOLY HOURS.— No. IX. 



" Scires e sanguine natos." 



Ovid. 



It IS common for busy and active men to behold the 

 occupations of the retired and contemplative person with 

 contempt. They consider his speculations as idle and 

 unproductive : as they participate in none of his feelings, 

 they are strangers to his motives, his views, and his de- 

 lights : they behold him elaborately employed on what 

 they conceive forwards none of the interests of life, con- 

 tributes to none of its gratifications, removes none of its 

 inconveniences : they conclude, therefore, that he is led 

 away by the delusions of futile philosophy, that he la- 

 bours for no good, and lives to no end. Of the various 

 frames of mind Avhich they observe in him, no one seems 

 to predominate more, and none appears to them more ab- 

 surd than sadness, which seems, in some degree, to per- 



