Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/181

Rh mill stream bounding it on one side, where lie the earthly remains of the ancient inhabitants of Dunstable. We passed it three or four miles below here. You may read there the names of Lovewell, Farwell, and many others whose families were distinguished in Indian warfare. We noticed there two large masses of granite more than a foot thick and rudely squared, lying flat on the ground over the remains of the first pastor and his wife.

It is remarkable that the dead lie every where under stones,—

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. When the stone is a slight one, and stands upright, pointing to the skies, it does not oppress the spirits of the traveller to meditate by it; but these did seem a little heathenish to us; and so are all large monuments over men's bodies, from the pyramids down. A monument should at least be "star-y-pointing," to indicate whither the spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like the body it has deserted. There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen. But why these stones, so upright and emphatic, like exclamation points! What was there so remarkable that lived? Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed 'to commemorate,—a stone to a bone? "Here lies,"—"Here lies";—why do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended? "Having reached the term of his natural life;"—would it not be truer to say,