I sometimes think the funeral rites and cemeteries of a people best
characterize its piety. Contrast the modern with the primitive
grave-yards,--their funeral services so dismal, doleful, despairing: as
if their faith in immortality were fittest clad in sables, and death
were a descent of souls, instead of an ascension. What fairer views of
life and of immortality our fresher faith exhibits. Verdure, cheerful
marbles, tasteful avenues, flowers, simple epitaphs, inscriptions
celebrating the virtues properly humane. What in the range of English
lyric verse is comparable to Wordsworth's ode, entitled Intimations
of Immortality in Childhood, or his prose Essay on Epitaphs. Nor
is the contrast so disparaging between these and Pagan moralities.
Christianity can hardly add to the sweetness and light, the tenderness,
trust in man's future well-being, shown in Plutarch's consolatory
Letter to his Wife on the death of his little daughter. One becomes
more Christian, even, in copying it.