THE CATHEDRAL. 
369 
living friends’ birthdays,—which we are ever tenderly 
ready to cultivate, when called on; turtle, venison, and 
champagne, being pleasant investments for the affections. 
But time and business do not admit of a faithful ad¬ 
herence to more sombre reminiscences; a busy gentle¬ 
man “on ’Change,” cannot conveniently shut himself up, 
on his “lost Araminta’s natal-day,” nor will a railroad 
committee allow of his running down by the 10.25 A.M., 
to shed a tear over that neat tablet in the new Willow- 
cum-Hatband Cemetery. He is necessarily content to 
regret his Araminta in the gross, and to omit the petty 
details of a too pedantic sorrow. 
The fact is, we are an eminently practical people, and 
are easily taught to accept “ the irrevocable,” if not with¬ 
out regret, at least with a philosophy which repudiates 
all superfluous methods of showing it. Decent is the 
usual and appropriate term applied to our churchyard 
solemnities, and we are not only “ content to dwell 
in decencies for ever,” but to die, and be buried in 
them. 
The cathedral loses a little of its poetical physiognomy 
on a near approach. Modern restoration has done 
something to spoil the outside, and modern refinement 
