cawing to their nests, while a flock of sheep, attended by the shepherd and his dog, are slowly withdrawing to the fold. Every thing seems to breathe of death,— to remind me that my sun too is setting, and that I must shortly go to my long home, for the night is approaching. And here, methinks, if my appointed time were come, with the grass for my bed of death, the earth and sky sole witnesses of my exit, I could contentedly commit my last breath to the air, that it might be wafted to Him who gave it. Life is at all times precarious;-there are but a few feet of earth between the stoutest of us and the grave, and at my age we should not be too sanguine in our calculations; yet, if I were to judge from my own unbroken health and inward feelings, as well as from the opinions of others more competent to pronounce, I have yet ten years at least, perhaps many more, of happiness in store for me. Should the former period be consummated, I pledge myself again to commune with the public. Should it be otherwise, I may, perhaps, be enabled to realize the wish of the celebrated Dr. Hunter, who half an hour before his death exclaimed, "Had I a pen, and were able to write, I would describe how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die!" In either alternative, gentle reader, if my example shall have assisted in teaching thee how to live grateful and happy, and to look upon death with resignation, the object of this Memoir will be attained, and thou wilt have no cause to regret perusing this sketch of A. SEPTUAGENARY. ADDRESS TO THE ALABASTER SARCOPHAGUS, LATELY DEPOSITED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. THOU alabaster relic! while I hold My hand upon thy sculptured margin thrown, And fix'd the blazing sun upon its basis, How many thousand ages from thy birth Thou sleptst in darkness, it were vain to ask, What time Elijah to the skies ascended, Thebes from her hundred portals fill'd the plain What banners waved, what mighty music swell'd, ADDRESS TO THE ALABASTER SARCOPHAGUS. 223 As armies, priests, and crowds, bewail'd in chorus Thus to thy second quarry did they trust Thee and the Lord of all the nations round. Grim King of Silence! Monarch of the dust! Embalm'd-anointed-jewell'd-scepter'd-crown'd, Here did he lie in state, cold, stiff, and stark, A leathern Pharaoh grinning in the dark. Thus ages roll'd—but their dissolving breath The Persian conqueror o'er Egypt pour'd The steel-clad horsemen-the barbarian horde- Then did the fierce Cambyses tear away The ponderous rock that seal'd the sacred tomb; Then did the slowly penetrating ray Redeem thee from long centuries of gloom, Pluck'd from his grave, with sacrilegious taunt, They tore the sceptre from his graspless hand, Some pious Thebans, when the storm was past, Then thy third darkness came, and thou didst sleep But he from whom nor pyramid nor sphinx Can hide its secrecies, Belzoni, came; From the tomb's mouth unloosed the granite links, Thou art in London, which, when thou wert new, Here, where I hold my hand, 'tis strange to think And vainly conn'd the moralizing line. Kings, sages, chiefs, that touch'd this stone, like me, Where are ye now ?-where all must shortly be ! All is mutation;he within this stone Was once the greatest monarch of the hour :- THE OBLIGING ASSASSIN. FROM THE FRENCH. ONCE sleeping in an Inn at Dover, When a pale heteroclite figuré, With dusty shoes, stalk'd in and spoke: Trembling all over with the notion I huddled on my clothes, and snatch'd Round me a winding-sheet, or shroud: What horrors to my fancy crowd! In this alarming plight compell'd And when I winced, and made grimace, Drops from my face began to flow, I clench'd my teeth and pump'd my breath. |