It was Sunday morning; and the church bells were all ringing together. From all the neighbouring villages, came the solemn, joyful¹ sounds, floating through the sunny air, mellow² and faint and low,--all mingling³ into one harmonious⁴ chime, like the sound of some distant organ in heaven. Anon they ceased; and the woods, and the clouds, and the whole village, and the very air itself seemed to pray, so silent was it everywhere.
 
Two venerable old men,--high priests and patriarchs were they in the land,--went up the pulpit stairs, as Moses and Aaron went up Mount Hor, in the sight of all the congregation,--for the pulpit stairs were in front, and very high.
 
Paul Flemming will never forget the sermon he heard that day,--no, not even if he should live to be as old as he who preached it. The text was, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." It was meant to console the pious⁵, poor widow, who sat right below him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, all in black, and her heart breaking. He said nothing of the terrors of death, nor of the gloom of the narrow house, but, looking beyond these things, as mere⁶ circumstances to which the imagination mainly gives importance, he told his hearers of the innocence⁷ of childhood upon earth, and the holiness of childhood in heaven, and how the beautiful Lord Jesus was once a little child, and now in heaven the spirits of little children walked with him, and gathered flowers in the fields of Paradise. Good old man! In behalf of humanity, I thank thee for these benignant words! And, still more than I, the bereaved⁸ mother thanked thee, and from that hour, though she wept in secret for her child, yet
 
"She knew he was with Jesus,
 
And she asked him not again."
 
After the sermon, Paul Flemming walked forth⁹ alone into the churchyard. There was no one there, save a little boy, who was fishing with a pin hook in a grave half full of water. But a few moments afterward¹⁰, through the arched gateway¹¹ under the belfry, came a funeral procession. At its head walked a priest in white surplice, chanting. Peasants, old and young, followed him, with burning tapers¹² in their hands. A young girl carried in her arms a dead child, wrapped in its little winding¹³ sheet. The grave was close under the wall, by the church door. A vase of holy water stood beside it. The sexton took the child from the girl's arms, and put it into a coffin¹⁴; and, as he placed it in the grave, the girl held over it a cross, wreathed with roses, and the priest and peasants sang a funeral hymn¹⁵. When this was over, the priest sprinkled the grave and the crowd with holy water; and then they all went into the church, each one stopping as he passed the grave to throw a handful of earth into it, and sprinkle it with holy water.
 
A few moments afterwards, the voice of the priest was heard saying mass in the church, and Flemming saw the toothless old sexton treading the fresh earth into the grave of the little child, with his clouted¹⁶ shoes. He approached him, and asked the age of the deceased. The sexton leaned a moment on his spade, and shrugging his shoulders replied;
 
"Only an hour or two. It was born in the night, and died this morning early?"
 
"A brief existence," said Flemming. "The child seems to have been born only to be buried, and have its name recorded on a wooden tombstone."
 
The sexton went on with his work, and made no reply. Flemming still lingered among the graves, gazing with wonder at the strange devices, by which man has rendered death horrible and the grave loathsome¹⁷.
 
In the Temple of Juno at Elis, Sleep and his twin-brother Death were represented as children reposing¹⁸ in the arms of Night. On various funeral monuments of the ancients the Genius of Death issculptured as a beautiful youth, leaning on an inverted¹⁹ torch, in the attitude of repose²⁰, his wings folded and his feet crossed. In such peaceful and attractive forms, did the imagination of ancient poets and sculptors²¹ represent death. And these were men in whose souls the religion of Nature was like the light of stars, beautiful, but faint and cold! Strange, that in later days, this angel of God, which leads us with a gentle hand, into the "Land of the great departed, into the silent Land," should have been transformed into a monstrous²² and terrific thing! Such is the spectral²³ rider on the white horse;--such the ghastly skeleton with scythe²⁴ and hour-glass;--the Reaper²⁵, whose name is Death!
 
One of the most popular themes of poetry and painting in the Middle Ages, and continuing down even into modern times, was the Dance of Death. In almost all languages is it written,--the apparition²⁶ of the grim spectre, putting a sudden stop to all business, and leading men away into the "remarkable²⁷ retirement²⁹" of the grave. Itis written in an ancient Spanish Poem, and painted on a wooden bridge in Switzerland. The designs of Holbein are wel............