250 MEMOIR OF THOMAS BEWICK. 



I could see what that manner of making prints was 

 capable of. 



After my journeys (long ago) to Cherryburn were 

 ended, I used, as formerly, seldom to miss going in 

 the mornings to Elswick Lane, to drink whey, or 

 buttermilk, and commonly fell in with a party who 

 went there for the same purpose ; and this kind of 

 social intercourse continued for many years. I 

 also, at that time, on the Sunday afternoons, went 

 to visit and contemplate in the church-yards, and 

 there give vent to my mind, in feelings of regret, 

 and in repeating a kind of soliloquy over the graves 

 of those with whom I had been intimate. 



"And then I lov'd to haunt lone burial places, 



Pacing the church-yard path with noiseless tread, 

 To pore on new-made graves for ghastly traces, 

 Brown crumbling bones of the forgotten dead." 



I recounted in my memory the numbers of my 

 friends thus put by to be forgotten, amongst the 

 millions of others who had been for longer or 

 shorter periods also in this world, and who have 

 passed away into Eternity. Even the " frail 

 memorial" erected to "perpetuate the memory" of 

 those who had been esteemed seemed to be of 

 little avail, and their mementos, as well as those 

 decked out with ornamented flatteries, would, in 

 time, all go to decay, and be no longer remembered 

 than until all who once knew them were also dead ; 

 and the numbers of both the one and the other 

 appeared to me to be so immense that to estimate 

 them seemed impossible, and like attempting to 

 count the grains of sand on the sea beach. It is 

 thus that the grave swallows all up without 

 distinction. The true estimate of their various 

 merits can only be known to the Creator of all. 



