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vor in liuinble imitation of him whose deatli we deplore, 

 and whose virtues we honor, to improve even this occasion 

 to the practical benefit of my fellow men. Such, methinks, 

 would be his course, if he were living and called to act in 

 the circumstances under which I find myself placed. He 

 allowed no opportunity to pass unimproved, if by any 

 means he could employ it to the good of mankind. Little 

 did I think, this tkne last year, that I should be soon called 

 to ofiiciate at his burial — to see the doors of death opened 

 and then closed upon him, till the clangor of the Archan- 

 gel's trumpet shall break the silence of the grave, and the 

 dawn of the resurrection morn shall shed its light over all 

 the places of the scattered and slumbering dead ! But 

 God's ways are inscrutable — his wisdom unsearchable and 

 his judgments a great deep. Submission, trust and hope 

 are the virtues which his dealings with us evermore and 

 emphatically inculcate. 



About seven years ago I stood by the tomb of Sir Wal- 

 ter Scott, the great Weird of the E'orth — the man whose 

 genius by a kind of magic influence held the world spell- 

 bound. His grave was made under an arch in the ruins of 

 Dryburg Abbey and covered with a plain slab of Sand-stone, 

 his name with the date of his birth and death inscribed up- 

 on it. His wife and eldest son reposed in death by his side, 

 one on the right, the other on his left. It was the most 

 melancholy-looking place I ever saw. The spirit of sad- 

 ness seemed to preside over the spot ; to utter its low voice 

 in the gentle and just audible murmurs of the Tweed ; to 

 breathe sighs in the light winds that whispered through the 

 trees and to brood over all the scene like a dull haze ob- 

 scuring the brightness of the sky. It seemed to me, as if this 

 great man had come to this secluded spot to lay down the 

 burden of mortality in mockery of the pride and vanity of 

 human expectations. It is well known, that his fondest 

 and most earnest desires were to attain the honors and ti- 



