Page:Reflections among the monuments.pdf/16

 alive: and let thy widows truſt in me—This, now, is the comfort of their life, and the joy of their heart. They treafure it up in their memories. It is the beſt of legacies, and an inexhauſtible fund. A fund, which will ſupply all their wants, by entailing the bleſſing of heaven on all their honeſt labours.

No sooner turned from one memento of my own, and memorial of another's deceaſe, but a ſecond, a third, a long ſucceſſion of theſe melancholy monitors crowd upon my ſight.——That which has fixed my obſervation, is one of a more grave and ſable aſpect than the former. I ſuppoſe it preſerves the relicks of a more aged perſon. One would conjecture, that he made ſomewhat of a figure in his ſtation among the living, as his monument does among the funeral marbles. Let me draw near, and enquire of the ſtone. "Who, or what, is beneath its ſurface?"—I am informed, he was once the owner of a conſiderable eſtate: which was much improved by his own application and management; that he left the world in the buſy period of life, advanced a little beyond the meridian.

Probably, replied my muſing mind, one of thoſe indefatigable drudges, who riſe early, late take reſt, and eat the bread of carefulneſs, not to ſecure the loving-kindneſs of the, not to make proviſion for any reaſonable neceſſity, but only to amaſs