The chief dialogues were William Tell, the buck-basket scene from the Merry Wives of Windsor, the cowardice of Falstaff in King Henry IV. Swift's Tale of a Tub, and High Life Below Stairs.

The costume, selected for the Swiss, in William Tell, was remarkable, and received great praise. It was simply this:-our shirts put on over all the rest of our dress, and girded with a black belt, so that we looked as though walking in our sleep.

He, who performed the part of Peter, in the Tale of a Tub, was clothed in a white surplice, made of a large damask table-cloth.

Falstaff strutted about in his grandfather's breeches, stuffed out with a chair-cushion and bolster, with a tremendously large white perriwig on his head, and his nose painted as red as brandy.

"Sweet Mistress Ford," and the equally sweet Mistress Page, were boys of fourteen, tricked out in their sisters' finery, and squeaking treble most unmusically.

Old Archimedes Digit was my favorite part, and, whoever saw me that night in character, will always remember it. My head was adorned (?) with a bob wig, worn sideways, to indicate absence of mind; my body was forced into a suit of clothes, which I had long outgrown, and in which, I looked as though choked by their compression. My coat-sleeves hardly reached my elbows, and the legs of my inexpressibles only half covered my shins. Huge buckles clasped my shoes, and a pair of goggles bestrode my nose. Thus accoutred, with an immense folio under my arm, I enacted the poverty-stricken pedant, amidst a cataract of laughter. I was the mathematical pedant. Associated with me, were two other pedantic professors,-one a linguist, the other a musician, (I have forgotten their dramatic names,) clothed in a manner equally ridiculous. During the dialogue, Mr. Musician gets enraged with Mr. Linguist, and receives a caning for his impertinence. I cannot, to this day, recollect that caning with any degree of gravity. While Polyglott was pounding Crotchett across the back, Crotchett was roaring for mercy, hopping about, first on one leg, and then on the other, and all the while rubbing his shins, as though they were caned, instead of his shoulders! In that blunder, I read the whole future character of the man, and read it correctly. He has always rubbed his shins, when he ought to have rubbed his back.

The net avails of our exhibition, amounting to a very handsome sum, we presented to a charitable association. On counting the tickets, which had been taken by the door-keeper, it appeared, much to our astonishment, that more had been disposed of than had been accounted for to the society. The tickets were then examined, and the discovery made, that many of them were counterfeit,-with the secretary's name forged very neatly, but not so well as to defy scrutiny. Here was treachery, and who was the author? My suspicions were soon fixed upon him who proved to be the author of the trick; and, with characteristic zeal, I devoted myself to a search after the rogue. I will not narrate subsequent occurrences; many are yet living who knew them, and, probably, the culprit has long since repented of his offence. I will only add, that he was of the most respectable family,-that his exposure broke up the Oratorical Society, and that I soon after ceased, by becoming a Collegian, to be one of the Academicians.

316

MOUNT AUBURN.

"LET us go out to Mount Auburn," says some one of a gay party, just stepping into their vehicles or mounting their horses; and away they dash, full of life, and health, and beauty, to visit the mansions of Death, where he seems to reign in his most elaborate and yet solemn magnificence, reminding us, as they sweep by, to make a sober jest with the line of the poet

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

"Let us ride to Mount Auburn," says the ennuyée, rising from dinner, with the prospect of a long afternoon before him; and forth they go, to rid themselves of Time, among the final homes of those who have exchanged it for Eternity. "Let us go out to the Cemetery," whispers the wife to the husband, as some lingering sunset is softening into twilight, half doubting lest he should check the wish, which he knows to spring from a mother's heart; but he yields to the request, and they visit the grave of their child, to strew a few flowers upon its new enclosure. "You must go out to Mount Auburn with us, this afternoon," says the citizen to the stranger; and thither they go, too, to talk learnedly of obelisks and monuments, national taste, Westminster Abbey and Pere La Chaise. Reader, let us go, too; but let us walk, nor drive up in dusty splendor to the crowded gate-way, tossing our reins to the keeper as we would to the ostler of a tavern.

And yet, notwithstanding all that sometimes offends the taste before you enter, in spite of the incongruity of ideas, which the crowd of vehicles and the looks of the riders will excite, when you are once within the enclosure, Fashion and the World, and Gaiety and Splendor, are soon forgotten. Standing in the dark groves, where the broken light falls down through the openings of the trees, and singularly possessed by the wonderful stillness of the place, the most distinguished air and the most fashionable tournure will pass you unnoticed, when you would have turned to gaze, had you met them in the street. The visiters, too, one and all, no matter what their mood when they reached the gate-way, are at once sobered and subdued, as soon as they have passed under those gathering shades. You shall see a young lady leap from the carriage, laughing in all the luxury of youth and health, and reveling in some jest which has been started; and when you pass her in an avenue, or meet her on the hill, she will be lost in contemplation, and forget to return your civilities, if you should not yourself be too abstracted to offer them. Still, the influence of the place is not a melancholy or a saddening influence; it is better-it is expansive and soothing, filling the mind with the beauties of nature, and thus breaking the force of any passionate expressions of affliction, which may be ready to burst forth, and uniting the great idea of death in general, with images and objects which are not shadowy and hard to grasp, but before us, around us, and familiar. We never go in there, without feeling the deep philosophy of the sentiment, which Shakspeare has put into the mouth of Timon, when he makes him say, that he will make

his everlasting mansion Upon the beeched verge of the salt flood;

Which once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover;

thus expanding an individual feeling into the vastness and extent of the ocean itself, and depriving it of its bitterness by connecting it with the most magnificent image in nature. We think, indeed, that no one can go in there and give himself up to the spirit of the place, without feeling something of this expansion-this breaking away from the narrow localities of the dismal church-yard, and diffusing the thoughts over a space that admits and embraces greater sympathies with the creation. The moment the feelings are concentrated, if the subject be ourselves or our own griefs, that moment they are cramped; and when we dwell on the confined and ordinary habitations of the dead, with no images of beauty or magnificence to lead away the thoughts from decay and corruption, we are borne down by our feelings of grief, and disgust, and harrowing sorrow for the dead. But in these beautiful pleasure-grounds of Death, there is every thing needful to rob it of its terrors, while the place of the deposited remains is sufficiently indicated and exact, to give the feelings a spot on which to dwell. We never lose a certain sort of sympathy for the dead, which arises from placing ourselves in their situation and imagining-strange solecism! but actually one which we commit-imagining how they feel. If they are sunk beneath the ocean's wave, we follow them down into those all unvisited depths, where living man never has approached and never can. If, as with the ancients, their bodies are consumed, we strive to go in thought with each atom to the elements into which it is resolved; and when, at last, the resulting dust is gathered up, we would fain flatter ourselves that all is concentrated there. If they are placed in the common grave, we think, painfully, indeed, and with averted eyes, on the work of dissolution. Wherever they go, whatever disposition is made, thither we go with them, in waking hours and in dreams; and if any thing can be done to beautify the spot, it is so much taken from the cold, repulsive, cheerless condition, in which our feelings are ever presenting them to us. The history of sepulchral architecture and funereal customs has here a deep foundation in the necessities of our nature and condition. We cannot bear that the transition should be so sudden and complete, as it is in its original, unadorned, and simple state. We would make the dead to "stay a little longer," by surrounding them with things which really belong to this world, but which we have thereby consecrated to uses on the passage to the next. Why did the Indian lay the bow and arrow, and slay the dog, by the side of the dead? Why did the Egyptian embalm and emblazon? Why do the natives of Southern Africa carry food and raiment to their cemeteries? Why do we busy our grief about the marble and the shroud, deeming it a sacrilege that the dead should be more meanly served than was their wont in life? Not solely, in any of these cases, from a regard to decency and custom ; but because we would feel, if haply we can persuade ourselves to do so, that they are not wholly beyond the consciousness of pomp and ceremony, and have not ceased to be within the sphere of circumstance. We would connect them back, if we could, by some of the things of sense," the appurtenances of affectionate superstition;" and knowing that we cannot pass over the great gulf, really to minister to

their wants, we solace ourselves by creating imaginary wants for that only part of them that is still within our reach.

But we are at the gate, and must drop our speculations. Reader, you may not have been there, if not a dweller in the neighborhood; or, if you have, it cannot be unwelcome to stroll with us again through the grounds. As you go in, there is the beautiful sarcophagus, chiseled in Italy, erected to the name of Spurzheim, who died among us, as if without a country, but as a citizen of the world, and a member of the human family,-meeting the visiter first, on his entrance, as if to remind him how completely all the members of that great family, whether of the East or the West, are mingled and united at the grave. A little farther on, lies all that was mortal of him, who ministered in the temple of Law, and whose spirit still lingers in the University, shining in the labors of his successor. Where is his learning, now? Where his clear reasoning, his refined acuteness, his grasping intellect? They are active in that other sphere, for which the discipline of earth was meant to prepare them. And where is the gratitude of his pupils? Does the marble still sleep in the quarry, or has the chisel begun its work? As you turn to the right, in one of the larger dells, she, who traced the recorded History of Religious Sects, lies buried; "First Tenant" of the Cemetery, who led the way, in her fullness of hope and usefulness, down into the new valley of death, at the head of that long train, which every day is gathering in. Many other names meet the eye, of fathers and parents, who have here prepared the last resting-place for themselves and their families, even as in the city they have built fair, costly homes for the sojourn of life. And now we have wound our way up to the hill-top, let us pause, and look around and think.

We are but beggarly at description, even with rich autumn woods and fair towns at our feet. But we cannot forbear to remind you of the river on the one hand, and the lake on the other, and the long stretch of marshes, with the university, and then, the city beyond. The city with its thousand pulses of life, beating warm and quick, through the great heart of society-how many eager hopes, vast plans, idle fancies, useful purposes, are there; how do they toil, and enjoy, and pull down, and build up, and then-here! here, where sleep cannot be disturbed, though the roar of twenty Babels were rising up into the peaceful groves, and where the unbroken goings-on of nature seem to mock the fitful, feverish courses of man. Here the hand will fall, and the eye sink, and they be brought out, one after another, to lie here and take their rest. And still the world will go on, nature and society, nor be stirred in its heavy current by the falling of their stricken leaves. Do their thoughts ever come up here, to contemplate that final rest? Does the image of this spot ever rise up before them, in the haunts of business, or the throng of pleasure?

We remember, on the day when this place was consecrated, sitting down with a friend, and remarking, that the proprietors seemed in great haste to lay out the grounds, as it would probably be long before many interments would begin to be made. But the seal has long been fully set to that ceremony of words, by the consecrating presence of Death itself. Some, who were of the multitude here assembled on that day, now lie in the recesses, which they then admired, and, perchance,

selected; and many more come daily to wander over the grounds, anticipating, perhaps even longing, for the time, when they, too, shall set up here their everlasting homes. The moral influence of such an establishment, in the immediate vicinity of a large city, cannot be too highly measured, or too often dwelt upon. It is here, that the prospect of death to ourselves, or that of friends, may become familiarized to the degree, and in the manner, that it ought to be; familiarized, by being divested of the old accompaniments, which have made it revolting, and, by being connected with much that is lovely, and tasteful, and new. Who ever thinks of visiting the common grave-yards in a city, to stumble over crowded mounds and old sunken monumental stones? Who can do so, but at the call of duty? And who does not feel the inestimable blessing of going to the grave of buried friends, amid scenes and objects that do not render it an utterly repulsive task? "When the funeral pyre was out," says the quaint Sir Thomas Browne, "and the last valediction over, men took a lasting adieu of their interred friends." Now, indeed, the lasting adieu is taken, both of that which dies, and that which cannot die. But the place of rest can be visited with holy joy; the sorrowful is steeped in the beautiful; the dark, deep waters of affliction can flow on, imaging in their bosom the loveliness that can be caught on earth. We have no fears that the fine effect should be lost, through publicity and the debasing purpose of a mere lounge for idle pleasure. The novelty will wear off, in a few years, both to the immediate neighborhood and to the more distant parts of the community; and, so long as the place retains its features of stillness and beauty, it will be impossible for levity often to invade its precincts, without sinking to the tone, which they inspire. There have been some few indications of a different spirit; but we have too much confidence in the natural influence of "whatsoever things are lovely and of good repute," to anticipate that it should be wholly lost on the public feeling.

We would say something of decorations and monuments, did we feel sure that our individual opinions are consonant to the intrinsic dictates of good taste and reason. Variety there must be, in these things, and ought to be; for the ornaments set up here, are but types and expressions of the variety in human feeling and affliction, now taking the form of hope and aspiration, now breaking forth in passionate expression, that cannot rise from under the weight of grief, and, sometimes, in fantastic conceits of sorrow, mingling images and thoughts that even verge upon the grotesque. But, in considering this subject, though there are, doubtless, in the sepulchral, as well as all other arts of decoration, certain principles of taste to be violated or to be followed, yet we have need, before we condemn, to cultivate a catholic and tolerant spirit. Whatever has been or shall be erected under the dictates of feeling and pious sorrow, will be sure to fall within the compass of the natural and the true; what is expressed in words, or figured in symbols, will be consistent with the heart and mind from which it emanated, and will embrace some of the forms and some of the ideas, in which the boundless variety of human grief and passion seeks its natural expression. We should go in there to admire or disapprove, precisely as we would go into the great field of human character itself. Some are nearer to, some more remote from,