346 



public cemeteries in France, during the reign of terror, infidelity, 

 and atheism. 



I always read that affecting passage in Pliny's letter to Cales- 

 trius, on the death of Corellius, with renewed pleasure. But it is 

 a pleasure mingled with deep concern. There is not a sentiment 

 in it which I do not feel, from having experienced a similar de- 

 privation. When the noble Roman sues to his friend for some un- 

 common consolation, something he had never known nor read of, how 

 do we wish he had been acquainted with one of those early martyrs 

 in the Christian church, whom, as proconsul of Bythinia, he was 

 then persecuting! The passage alluded to is much to my present 

 purpose; it points out, in one of the most elegant, accomplished, 

 and amiable characters of antiquity, his great desideratum in the 

 hour of calamity, in that trying hour when all human aid is fruit- 

 less. Here Pliny must utter his own feelings. 



" I now reflect what a friend, what a man I am deprived of! 

 He was sixty-seven years old when he died; a length of age suf- 

 ficient for men of the most robust constitutions: I know it, he is 

 released from perpetual torture: I know it, he left his relations, 

 nay, he left the commonwealth, dearer to him than all his relations, 

 flourishing and happy : this I know also. And yet I mourn his 

 death, as if he had fallen in the flower of youth, and the full 

 strength of his constitution: but to own to you my weakness; my 

 sorrow is in a great measure occasioned upon my own account. 

 I have lost, O ! I have lost the witness, the guide, the master of 

 my conduct. In short, to tell you what, in the first moments of 

 my grief, I said to Calvisius, I fear I shall grow less circumspect 

 than I have been. Administer, therefore, some comfort to me: 



