ST. BUDEAUX CHURCH. 149 



superstition, of dim and almost primeval antiquity ; 

 there the enormous barrows and cairns, rude monu- 

 ments of deadly conflict and bloodshed, of triumphs 

 and defeats, whose memory has all but passed away 

 from the records of history. 



But these legendary recollections must not detain 

 us longer from the more especial object of this sketch, 

 the Church of St. Budeaux. It occupies, with the 

 churchyard and adjoining village green, the plateau 

 of an eminence, which gradually rises from the very 

 margin of the Tamar. A spot so exposed to the 

 weather cannot be favourable to vegetation, and the 

 attempts that have been made to plant the church- 

 yard have failed, as I find by a memorandum in the 

 register. Very recently the experiment has been re- 

 peated, but with no more than partial success ; and 

 the few fine old trees, which have outlived the storms 

 of nearly a century, are recorded as the planting of 

 the Trelawneys, of Budshead, once the chief family 

 in the parish. Three fine ash, and a picturesque 

 group of pines, remain a living and graceful monu- 

 ment of the planters, who themselves have long 

 since mingled with the dust of this, their almost 

 patrimonial cemetry. 



No churchyard, and, a fortiori, no country church- 

 yard should be destitute of the pleasing and appro- 

 priate ornament of trees. Yet I would not advocate 

 the exotic, I had well nigh said spurious, taste, 

 which would transplant the decorations of Pere la 

 Chaise to an Enghsh burying ground : it is unconge- 

 nial with the sobered tone of our natural feeling, — a 

 feeling too deep to sympathize in the prettinesses of 

 French sentimentality ; — but trees, whether perennial 

 or deciduous, are characteristic and congenial decora- 

 tions. The cypress and yew, with their ever verdant 

 foliage, symbolise the enduring nature of our immor- 

 tal spirit ; while the falling leaf, which, from Homer's 

 time, if not before, has been the established type of 

 mortality, is not more truly so than is the reproduc- 

 tion of leaves on the same trees a significant and 



