CEMETERY OF MONTMARTRE. 47 



endure the same woes and sorrows and desolations as the survivors. 

 Nor is it on leaving the Cemetery, that we can shake off the images 

 which have impressed themselves upon the mind ; they are con- 

 tinued to us, as we retrace the road by which we approached it; 

 there is no occasion to ask the way : it is lined on each side with the 

 humble residences of those who live by the dead ; and at every step 

 the eye is arrested by the emblems and materials of their employ- 

 ment, from the marble monument to the humble wooden cross, with 

 the variety of yellow, white, and black flowers which the hands of 

 youth and age are alike busy weaving into chaplets for the tombs ; 

 sometimes the form of the tribute is varied into a heart, or a cross, 

 for those mourners who may like something un pen recherche, some- 

 times signifying by white the youth and purity of the object to be 

 deplored, sometimes by black the profoundness of the offerer's grief, 

 but most frequently by the little yellow flower called everlasting, 

 the perpetual nature of its duration here below, joined with the hope 

 of that immortality where it may reasonably be supposed to cease. 



No such thoughts, however, occupy the minds of those whose 

 fingers are thus employed ; they laugh and chat and sing whilst they 

 weave their wreaths : the workmen echo their strains, whilst they are 

 chipping and polishing the grave-stones, among which the little 

 children play at bo-peep, scarcely out of their cradles ere they begin 

 to familiarise themselves with forms and images of the grave. 



At the entrance of the Cemetery is the bureau, where we are 

 informed that Linguet, marbrier, $i-devant a Pere la Chaise, entre- 

 prend la plantation des jardins et les entretient a Canute. It may 

 be some consolation to us as we enter the Cemetery, to think that 

 we may have our gardens or our burial-places, entretenus, after the 

 last fashion of Ptre la Chaise ; but as for taking care of them by the 

 year, we feel no way inclined, when we come out, to make any 

 bargain of the sort, whatever we may have done on going in. Who 

 could think of looking forward to a year certain, after all that we 

 have been contemplating ? If any way of a nervous or gloomy 

 temperament, we shall rather wonder whether we shall have time to 

 get home and make our wills, ere we may be called upon to fill up 

 our niche in the society we have just left. As we get out of sight of 

 the fleuristes, however, and out of hearing of the marbriers, and 

 come once more within reach of the gay spectacles and lively sounds 

 of le beau Paris, those lugubrious ideas begin to clear away ; and ere 

 the evening returns, with its balls, its concerts, and its conversaziones, 

 we are in more danger of forgetting that we are to die, one day, to a 

 certainty, than of imagining that that day may be to-morrow. 

 Happy those who on so important, so awful a subject, can preserve 

 the golden mean between presumption and despair ; and who, acting 

 upon the advice of the English worthy, resolve every morning so to 

 conduct themselves with regard to temporal concerns, as if they were 

 to live in this world for ever ; with regard to their eternal ones, as if 

 they were going to leave it at night. 



E. S. 



