Page:Scenes in my Native Land.pdf/119

Rh around. They listened earnestly to the clergyman, as to a father, while he taught them, in their native German, of the happy return of infancy to the arms of its Redeemer.

The sacred and soul-stirring music with which this interment was attended, it would be in vain to attempt to describe. It was produced by a few of the young men of the village, who, bearing different instruments in perfect accord, walked at the head of the procession. They breathed the very soul of that melody, which mingling with the tender solemnity of the scene, raised the thoughts to Heaven. Some writer has said of a troubled realm, that "its national music lulled to sleep all its wrathful passions." So those solemn and harmonious strains seemed to charm away that bitterness of grief which is wont to linger round the grave where affection deposits its treasures.

After the burial, the people passed in the same order in which they had followed the little one to its last repose, through a public garden adorned with shrubbery and flowers, adjoining the cemetery. The countenances of the children were sweet and serious, as those who had not associated the death of a Christian babe with dread or terror. I thought the lesson they had learned there, impressed as it was by the words of inspiration, and the influence of music, would not soon be forgotten. Might we not also, ourselves, have received one, worthy of being remembered, how the burial of infant innocence might be