Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844

The old tomb,
With its quaint tracery, gilded here and there
With sunlight glancing through the o'er-arching lime,
Far flinging its cool shadow, flickering light —
Our greyhair'd sexton, with his hard grey face,
(A living tombstone!) resting on his mattock
By the low portal; and just over right,
His back against the lime-tree, his thin hands
Lock'd in each other – hanging down before him
As with their own dead weight – a tall slim youth
With hollow hectic cheek, and pale parch'd lip,
And labouring breath, and eyes upon the ground
Fast rooted, as if taking measurement
Betime for his own grave. I stopp'd a moment,
Contemplating those thinkers – youth and age —
Mark'd for the sickle; as it seem'd – the unripe
To be first gather'd. Stepping forward, then,
Down to the house of death, in vague expectance,
I sent a curious, not unshrinking, gaze.
There lay the burning brain and broken heart,
Long, long at rest: and many a Thing beside
That had been life – warm, sentient, busy life —
Had hunger'd, thirsted, laugh'd, wept, hoped, and fear'd —
Hated and loved – enjoy'd and agonized.
Where of all this, was all I look'd to see?
The mass of crumbling coffins – some belike
(The undermost) with their contents crush'd in,
Flatten'd, and shapeless. Even in this damp vault,
With more completeness could the old Destroyer
Have done his darkling work? Yet lo! I look'd
Into a small square chamber, swept and clean,
Except that on one side, against the wall,
Lay a few fragments of dark rotten wood,
And a small heap of fine, rich, reddish earth
Was piled up in a corner.

"How is this?"
In stupid wonderment I ask'd myself,
And dull of apprehension. Turning, then,
To the old sexton – "Tell me, friend," I said,
"Here should be many coffins – Where are they?
And" – pointing to the earth-heap – "what is that?"

He raised his eyes to mine with a strange look
And strangely meaning smile; and I repeated —
(For not a word he spoke) – my witless question.

Then with a deep distinctness he made answer,
Distinct and slow, looking from whence I pointed,
Full in my face again, and what he said
Thrill'd through my very soul – "That's what we are!"

So I was answer'd. Sermons upon death
I had heard many. Lectures by the score
Upon life's vanities. But never words
Of mortal preacher to my heart struck home
With such convicting sense and suddenness
As that plain-spoken homily, so brief,
Of the unletter'd man.

"That's what we are!" —
Repeating after him, I murmur'd low
In deep acknowledgment, and bow'd the head
Profoundly reverential. A deep calm
Came over me, and to the inward eye
Vivid perception. Set against each other,
I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense,
And of eternity; – and oh! how light
Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale!
And oh! what strength, when from the penal doom
Nature recoil'd, in His remember'd words:
"I am the Resurrection and the Life."

And other words of that Divinest Speaker
(Words to all mourners of all times address'd)
Seem'd spoken to me as I went along
In prayerful thought, slow musing on my way —
"Believe in me" – "Let not your hearts be troubled" —
And sure I could have promised in that hour,
But that I knew myself how fallible,
That never more should cross or care of this life
Disquiet or distress me. So I came,
Chasten'd in spirit, to my home again,
Composed and comforted, and cross'd the threshold
That day "a wiser, not a sadder, woman."

    C.

EDMUND BURKE.[14 - Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Edited by Earl Fitzwilliam and Sir Richard Bourke, K.C.B. 4 vols. 8vo. Rivingtons, London.]

Burke died in 1797, and yet, after the lapse of almost half a century, the world is eager to treasure every recollection of his name. This is the true tribute to a great man, and the only tribute which is worth the wishes of a great man. The perishable nature of all the memorials of human hands has justly been the theme of every moralist, since tombs first bore an image or an inscription. Yet, such as they are, they ought to be given; but they are all that man can give. The nobler monument must be raised by the individual himself, and must be the work of his lifetime; its guardianship must be in the hands, not of sacristans and chapters, but in those of the world; his panegyric must be found, not in the extravagance or adulation of his marble, but in the universal voice which records his career, and cherishes his name as a new stimulant of public virtue.

We have no intention of retracing the steps by which this memorable man gradually rose to so high a rank in the estimation of his own times. No history of intellectual eminence during the latter half of the nineteenth century – the most troubled, important, and productive period of human annals since the birth of the European kingdoms – can be written, without giving some testimonial to his genius in every page. But his progress was not limited to his Age. He is still progressive. While his great contemporaries have passed away, honoured indeed, and leaving magnificent proofs of their powers, in the honour and security of their country, Burke has not merely retained his position before the national eye, but has continually assumed a loftier stature, and shone with a more radiant illumination. The great politician of his day, he has become the noblest philosopher of ours. Every man who desires to know the true theory of public morals, and the actual causes which influence the rise and fall of thrones, makes his volumes a study; every man who desires to learn how the most solemn and essential truths may not merely be adorned, but invigorated, by the richest colourings of imagination, must labour to discover the secret of his composition; and every man who, born in party, desires to emancipate his mind from the egotism, bitterness, and barrenness of party, or achieve the still nobler and more difficult task of turning its evils into good, and of making it an instrument of triumph for the general cause of mankind, must measure the merits and success of his enterprise by its similarity to the struggles, the motives, and the ultimate triumph of Edmund Burke.

The present volumes contain a considerable portion of the correspondence which Burke carried on with his personal and public friends during the most stirring period of his life. The papers had been put in trust of the late French Lawrence the civilian, and brother to the late Archbishop of Cashel, with whom was combined in the trust Dr King, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, both able men and particular friends of Burke. But Lawrence, while full of the intention of giving a life of his celebrated friend, died in 1809, and the papers were bequeathed by the widow of Burke, who died in 1812, to the Bishop of Rochester, the Right Hon. W. Elliot, and Earl Fitzwilliam, for the publication of such parts as had not already appeared. This duty chiefly devolved upon Dr King, who had been made Bishop of Rochester in 1808. Personal infirmity, and that most distressing of all infirmities, decay of sight, retarded the publishing of the works; but sixteen volumes were completed. The bishop's death in 1828, put an end to all the hopes which had been long entertained, of an authentic life from his pen.

On this melancholy event, the papers came into the possession of the late Earl Fitzwilliam, from whom they devolved to the present Earl, who, with Sir Richard Bourke, a distant relative of the family, and personally intimate with Burke during the last eight years of his life, has undertaken the present collection of his letters. Those letters which required explanation have been supplied with intelligent and necessary notes, and the whole forms a singularly important publication.

Many of Burke's earliest letters were written to a Richard Shackleton, the son of a Quaker at whose school Burke with his two brothers had been placed in 1741. In 1743, he was placed in the college of Dublin, and then commenced his correspondence with Shackleton. Even those letters exhibit, at the age of little more than fifteen, the sentiments which his mature life was spent in establishing and enlarging. He says of sectaries, and this was to a sectary himself, "I assure you, I don't think near so favourably of those sectaries you mentioned, (he had just spoken of the comparative safety of virtuous heathens, who, not having known the name of Christianity, were not to be judged by its law,) many of those sectaries breaking, as they themselves confessed, for matters of indifference, and no way concerned in the only affair that is necessary, viz. salvation; and what a great crime schism is, you can't be ignorant. This, and the reasons in my last, and if you consider what will occur to yourself, together with several texts, will bring you to my way of thinking on that point. Let us endeavour to live according to the rules of the Gospel; and he that prescribed them, I hope, will consider our endeavours to please him, and assist us in our designs.