THE LAND OP BLACKBERRIES. 131 
from day to day as they wandered through the dreary 
wilderness—unwatched by men, but cared for by God— 
he, with his arm round her little neck, she looking up 
in his face with a tear in her eye, and amid the occa¬ 
sional fears and alarms which beset them, feeling still 
safe while guarded by her boy. Who could pluck a 
Blackberry and think of this without letting fall a tear, 
and again thanking God that he dwells in a land where 
the lives and liberties of babes are so sacred, that that 
old story never yet failed to move a heart, unless it were 
a heart of stone; thanking God that it is the land of 
baby love, of boyish glee, and of Blackberries. Ah ! the 
robin comes now, year by year, and strews leaves upon 
the graves of innocence, and the bramble of the hedge¬ 
rows is historically consecrated to the precious dust of 
the departed. See the old grave-digger busy in the 
country churchyard making a new grave “ comfortable,” 
with sods of grass bound in their places with hoops of 
bramblerods. Some of those will take root here¬ 
after in the rich earth of “ God’s acre,” and as Tennyson 
foresaw that the ashes of his friend would nourish the 
“ violet of his native land,” so we may see the far off 
likeness of the lost in the delicate blossom of the 
brambles—unless we rest there too before the summer 
comes. Jeremy Taylor uses this fact finely in a passage 
on the uncertainty of the life of man :—“ The autumn, 
with its fruits, prepares disorders for us, and the 
winter’s cold turns them into sharp diseases; and the 
spring brings flowers to strew upon our hearse; and the 
summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our 
graves.” This reminds me that the blossom of our 
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