haunts and hallows the marble tomb or grassy hillock where its material
form was laid. Till purified from each stain of clay; till the passions
of the living world are all forgotten; till it have less brotherhood
with the wayfarers of earth, than with spirits that never wore
mortality,--the ghost must linger round the grave. O, it is a long and
dreary watch to some of us!

Even in early childhood, I had selected a sweet spot, of shade and
glimmering sunshine, for my grave. It was no burial-ground, but a
secluded nook of virgin earth, where I used to sit, whole summer
afternoons, dreaming about life and death. My fancy ripened
prematurely, and taught me secrets which I could not otherwise have
known. I pictured the coming years,--they never came to me, indeed; but
I pictured them like life, and made this spot the scene of all that
should be brightest, in youth, manhood, and old age. There, in a little
while, it would be time for me to breathe the bashful and burning vows
of first-love; thither, after gathering fame abroad, I would return to
enjoy the loud plaudit of the world, a vast but unobtrusive sound, like
the booming of a distant sea; and thither, at the far-off close of life,
an aged man would come, to dream, as the boy was dreaming, and be as
happy in the past as lie was in futurity. Finally, when all should be
finished, in that spot so hallowed, in that soil so impregnated with the
most precious of my bliss, there was to be my grave. Methought it would
be the sweetest grave that ever a mortal frame reposed in, or an
ethereal spirit haunted. There, too, in future times, drawn thither by
the spell which I had breathed around the place, boyhood would sport and
dream, and youth would love, and manhood would enjoy, and age would
dream again, and my ghost would watch but never frighten them. Alas,
the vanity of mortal projects, even when they centre in the grave! I
died in my first youth, before I had been a lover; at a distance, also,