[204] It is another of the spots one would choose for his bones to lie in;--for, say what we will, there is a choice, and the thought of it is no indifferent matter to us while alive, however little the fact itself may concern us or others in future time. The Moravians believe so, at least. They appreciate justly, too, the moral influence, the religious science, of a grave-yard. They do not deem it either decent to leave it neglected, or necessary to make it frightful. The little village, which I visited one Sabbath morning, is embosomed in trees, and surrounded with the famed emerald verdure of the country on every side ;--divided into a small, harmonious arrangement of shaded streets, that, but for the neat rows of cottages, and regular beds of flowers on either hand, look more like natural lanes;--“remote from cities,” in a word;--serene, peaceful, beautiful as a “thought of Paradise.” I attended service in the little church, and afterwards walked through the grave-yard which lies on the table-land of a gentle green swell behind it, skirted with flourishing and flowery hedges, and spotted over, in hollow and heap, with checks of a mellow September sunshine, sifted through branches of leaning trees. I need not describe the scene in detail. The customs of this sect in the care of their dead are known to all. How truly are they delineated in Montgomery's lines on the graves of the Patriarchs:--
A scene sequestered from the haunts of men,
The loveliest nook of all that lovely glen,
Where weary pilgrims found their last repose.
The little heaps were ranged in comely rows,
