THE CHURCHYARD. 
291 
by the living. Shall we, in a Christian land, claim to have less 
of justice, less of decency and natural feeling, than the rude 
heathen whose place on the earth we have taken ; a race who 
carefully watched over the burial-places of their fathers with un- 
wavering fidelity ? Shall we seek to rival the deed of the brutal 
wrecker who strips the corpse of the drowned man on the wild 
shoi-e of the ocean when no honest arm is near ? Shall we fol- 
low in the steps of the cowardly thief who prowls in the dark- 
ness about the field of battle to plunder the lifeless brave ? Shall 
we cease to teach our children that of all covetousness, that which 
would spoil the helpless is the most revolting ? Or, in short, shall 
w^e sell the ashes of our fathers that a little more coin may jingle 
in our own pockets ? 
It matters little that a m^n say he should be willing his own 
grave should be broken up, his own bones scattered to the 
winds ; the dead, whom he would disturb, might tell a different 
tale could their crumbling skeletons rise up before him, endowed 
once more with speech. There was a great man who, if we may 
believe the very solemn words on his tomb, has spoken in this 
instance, as in ten thousand others, the strong, natural language 
of the human heart : 
" Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
To dig the dust enclosed here ; 
Blest be he that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones." 
In this new state of society — in this utilitarian age — it behooves 
us, indeed, to be especially on our guard against any attack upon 
the tomb ; the same spirit which, to-day, stands ready to break 
open the graves of a past generation, to-morrow, by carrying out 
