The Country Gciitkniaiis ]\Iagaziiic 



259 



^hc ©aviien. 



CEME TER Y GA RDENING. 



IT has been asserted that a nation's pro- 

 gress in civih'zation and the arts can be 

 traced by its monumental decorations, and 

 the care bestowed upon the last resting-places 

 of its dead. This saying, however, must only 

 be admitted with wide reservations, for if 

 accepted in anything like its literal sense it 

 would go to prove that the nations of Western 

 Europe, notwithstanding their boasted civiliza- 

 tion, actually remained in worse than savage 

 barbarity till the present century, inasmuch as 

 not only the Mahometans and Chinese, but 

 even the most untutored and recently dis- 

 covered tribes of New Zealand and North- 

 west America cared more for the gi-aves of 

 their departed than did the most enlightened 

 nations of Christendom. The era of ceme- 

 tery gardening in Christian Europe may be 

 said to have been inaugurated at Paris in 

 1804, when the extensive gardens and plea- 

 sure-grounds on Mount Louis, which had be- 

 longed to Pere la Chaise, the favourite confes- 

 sor of Louis XIV., were converted into a burial- 

 ground, intended at first chiefly for those who 

 could afford to purchase •u grave and rear a 

 monument. The Cemetery of Pere la Chaise 

 has always been looked upon, not only as one 

 of the grand sights of Paris, but also as ex- 

 hibiting the hcaii ideal of what a cemetery 

 should be, and it has greatly influenced 

 foreign visitors, by stimulating in them a 

 taste and desire for cemetery improvement in 

 their native lands. 



In our own country comparatively little 

 attention was devoted to cemetery improve- 

 ment till after the first quarter of the present 

 century, prior to which most of our city bury- 

 ing grounds were foul pestilential areas, 

 crowded with -"uncared for monuments, and 

 often so frequently upturned, that, even 



the most obnoxious of rank growing weeds, 

 could scarcely sustain an occasional appear- 

 ance of irregularly scattered verdure. Our 

 country church-yards were interspersed with un- 

 sightly mounds, and covered with the coarsest 

 of grasses, netdes, and other vile forms of 

 vegetation, while not unfrequently they were 

 desecrated by depasturing cattle, sheep, or 

 goats ; and so litde regard was had for antient 

 monumental stones, that gi'ave-diggers fre- 

 quently sold them to be re-dressed for new 

 owners, converted into hearthstones, or ap- 

 plied to other purposes for which they or 

 their friends might find them useful. Gene- 

 ral attention became at length directed to 

 cemetery improvement, by the horrid re- 

 velations made in the report of a Govern- 

 ment Commission, and by the Cemetery 

 Bill, which was brought into Parliament in 

 1842. About this time also was published 

 the " Necropolis Glasgoensis," a most ad- 

 mirably written pamphlet, which did great 

 service in the cause; and in 1843 appeared 

 " The Principles of Landscape Gardening 

 applied to Public Cemeteries," by that most 

 voluminous writer, the late John Claudius Lou- 

 don (the last of his many useful publications, 

 issued only a few months before his death), in 

 which he gave very full details regarding the 

 proper laying-out, planting, architecture, and 

 after management of cemeteries. For many 

 of the views and recommendations promul- 

 gated in this publication, its author incurred 

 a good deal of censure and ridicule ; and not 

 a few of his schemes were stigmatized as being 

 extravagant, visionary, and Utopian, although 

 most of them have since come to be very 

 generally approved of and acted upon. 

 Among his opponents were a then rather 

 numerous class, who had been accustomed, 



