Secondly, habits of observation open sources of improvement to all classes. Every thing which passes around us has some appropriate lesson. The scenes of nature utter a thousand voices, and the actions of men are never silent to those who listen. Thirdly, reflection on the materials which observation has gained may be carried on in a vast variety of circumstances. Agricultural pursuits are favourable to reflection, as are all sedentary trades and professions. Those who know how to reflect will not always feel solitary when alone, and will not be dependent on external circumstances for all their happiness. Fourthly, as the results of the observation and reflection of others are a necessary help to our own, reading well-selected books will be a principal source of mental advancement. An acquaintance with books must not be confounded with real wisdom, but that wisdom is materially assisted by such an acquaintance. OBSERVE, THINK, READ, are the lessons we should continally present to the young, and to all indeed who are solicitous to obtain a cultivated understanding. Some illustrious examples of self-acquired attainments were adduced, and the lecture closed. Previous to the lecture, above one hundred and twenty persons connected with the Baptist Chapel sat down to tea in the School-room, which has been recently erected, and forms a handsome object in the quarter of the town in which it stands." BURIAL PLACES. No. II. In a former paper on this subject some striking accounts were given of different methods of interment, some delightfully pleasing, and others very revolting to humanity. The acceptance which that article met with has induced the writer to continue his reflections, and to select other interesting examples. The burial grounds of our own country are not only instructive as the last abode of our friends and relatives, they also teach us solemn lessons by their venerable antiquity. They are spots in which we converse with past generations of men. The habits, the sentiments of other years, are revived; as the grave-stone is more impressed by "time's decaying fingers," and the inscription speaks a language more antiquated, we move in imagination' among people, whom the oldest on earth cannot really remember. How many grades of society are made to pass before us as we survey an old burial ground and the antique temple connected with it! There are effigies of the monks, designating an age of superstition. With a little effort of fancy the black marble figure again glows with life, and the church is transformed into a monastery of the earlier time. Armed warriors whose sword death has long since sheathed remind us of the martial spirit of our ancestors, the time of knights and ladies, of captive innocence, and dauntless liberators. The pious zeal of survivors points us, in other cases, to the works of love and charity by which the departed were characterized. Age after age rolls on; the sculpture and the writing gradually become more familiar, till we find ourselves treading on the dust of those with whom we have actually conversed. On a future occasion we shall endeavour to describe some old burial grounds minutely; for the present the following miscellaneous descriptions are given. Take the following sweet picture first; we have found it in Tait's Magazine for October. Besides the decayed castles and verdant sites, where once a hamlet or little toun flourished, there is another touching feature in Highland scenery-lonely burying grounds, remote from tower or town, and often hanging above the sea or some creek of a loch. We have seen them in different places of those desolated tracks, where births are now rarer than burials. Some of them have been attached to Catholic religioushouses, fallen long since into decay; or to kirks suppressed by the union of parishes; others to decayed townships; some are in the beautiful islets of lochs. 'Oh, to be buried in one of those green islets! says some one, 'where no little boys could jump over our grave-stone, nor great ones trample on our dust with callous indifference!' One of the most soothing and solemn of those lonely burial grounds lies above the Frith in Ross-shire, nearly opposite Culloden Muir, on the sunward slope of the pastoral downs of Kilmuir, where many an evening sun smiles sweetly on the nameless graves; and we came upon such a burial place here. Such places help to people the desolate glens to us. We conjure up the sleepers, and bid them speak, and tell us their story, by the same potency which gave the borderer power to raise the wizard in Melrose Abbey.-But we have already told you too much of that story :-so farewell for ever to the broken and exiled clans. It is not in Sutherland we shall choose to speak of them— The cave of Machpelah, which became, after the purchase of Abraham, the family sepulchre of the Hebrew patriarchs, is thus described by the Spanish Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, who visited it about 650 years ago. "I came to Hebron, which is situated in a plain; the ancient city stood upon a hill, but it is now desolate. At this lower city there is a large temple called St. Abraham, which was the Jews' synagogue, when the country was in the possession of the Israelites, But the Gentiles, who afterwards inhabited the place, built six sepulchres in the temple, by the names of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, and Leah. The inhabitants now tell the pilgrims that they are the monu. ments of the patriarchs, and great sums of money are offered there. To any Jew, offering the porters a reward, the cave is shewn, with the iron gate opened, which is preserved for its antiquity. A man goeth down with a lamp into the first cave, where nothing is found, nor also in the second, until he enter the third, in which are all the six monuments, the one right over against the other. All of them have inscriptions, with the different names, in this manner; 'Sepulchrum Abraham patris nostri, super quem pax sit.' The grave of Abraham our father, with whom be peace. A lamp perpetually burns in the cave, fed with oil by persons appointed for the purpose. Also in the same cave, there are tuns full of the bones of the ancient Israelites, brought hither by their families." As we have approached the graves of the Patriarchs, we shall refer to two others. The first is the tomb of Rachael, thus described by Mr. Carne, in his "Recollections of the East." "The spot is as wild and solitary as can well be conceived; no palms or cypresses give their shelter from the blast; not a single tree spreads its shade where the ashes of the beautiful mother of Israel rest. Yet there is something in this sepulchre in the wilderness that excites a deeper interest than more splendid or revered ones. The tombs of Zecharias and Absalom, in the valley of Jehoshaphat, or that of the kings in the plain of Jeremiah, the traveller looks at with careless indifference; beside that of Rachel his fancy wanders to the land of the people of the east; to the power of beauty that could so long make banishment sweet to the devoted companion of the wanderer who deemed all troubles light for her sake. The precincts of the sepulchre are now used by the Turks as a cemetery, and the desire which they feel that their ashes may rest in this spot is singular and extreme. All round this simple tomb lie thickly strewn the graves of the Mussulmans. No slender pillars of wood or stone, with inscriptions in letters of gold are here; not a single memorial which this people are otherwise so fond of erecting in their cemeteries It seems to be sufficient that they are placed beneath the favorite sod; the small and numerous mounds, over which the survivor some times comes and weeps, mark the places of the graves." The next is a metrical musing suggested by reading Gen. 50. 2, 13, “And Joseph commanded his servants to embalm his father; and the physicians embalmed Israel. And his sons carried him into the land of Canaan, and buried him in the cave of Machpelah, which Abraham bought with the field for a possession of a burying place."— |