THE PROPER EXPRESSION OF A RURAL CEMETERY. 



of the tomb. The gravestones of a civilized people perpetuate multitudes of 

 special facts in the history of families and individuals, which we are prone to 

 undervalue, partly because familiarity brings indifference, partly because we cannot 

 anticipate the coming events that may cause these facts to be eagerly sought after 

 and organized into history. There is an immense fund of crude material for bio- 

 graphy spread out over the uncounted and too often uncared-for gravestones of 

 the generations gone before us. The merriment sometimes indulged in over the 

 inscriptions in our early burial-places is a mark neither of reverence or of 

 wisdom. We may smile, if we will, at bad latinity and worse anglicisms, at 

 wretched puns and halt verses, false rhymes and mis-spellings; but, beyond such 

 verbal faults, there is a fulness of detail in these old quaint epitaphs that gives 

 them a high historical value, to be enhanced with each succeeding year. As auto- 

 graphs of national character and unintended records of primitive society, they 

 hold up a mirror to traits of picturesque simplicity and massive strength, which 

 neither Macaulay nor Bancroft could more faithfully exhibit. 



At the present time, the tendency of our monumental literature is to barrenness 

 and reticence. In shunning one error, another has been fallen into equally cen- 

 surable. Costly and durable shafts are often erected without the fulness of epi- 

 taph, the accurate dates, and the analysis of character, by which their historical 

 value would be largely enhanced. Apparently it is overlooked, in such cases, 

 that the literature of cemeteries is addressed to strangers as well as to friends and 

 acquaintances, to coming generations as well as to the living. Completeness 

 without garrulity, deserved praise untainted by flattery, grief and solemnity 

 lighted up by Christian hope, are qualities of style appropriate to a tombstone. 

 The difficulty of composing faultless epitaphs is not a sufficient reason why such 

 tributes to the memory of departed worth should be withheld. 



III. It deserves to be added that the decorations of a rural cemetery should I^e 

 appropriately emblematic and typical of Christian sentiment. Ornament intro- 

 duced for its own sake, that solicits admiration and seeks to dazzle, is wholly out 

 of keeping. The embellishments should be such as will harmonize with subdued 

 feelings and serious frames of mind. They should not please the eye simply, but 

 touch the heart. A landscape artist can so select and group his trees and shrubs, 

 a sculptor can so conceive and execute his designs, that they shall invest the idea 

 of death with sweet suggestions of repose and comforted sorrow and a better 

 life. 



In the fitly chosen words of another,* " Here let there be trees, with their 

 grateful, soul-subduing shade ; there let us see the open lawn and cheerful sun- 

 shine ; around us, on every hand, let us behold the open bud and springing seed, 

 types of the resurrection ; and in the distance, let there be, if possible, glimpses 

 of the blue hills, suggestive of the mountains where the departed walk." 



To what extent trees, so multitudinous in their diff"erences of habit, tissue, 

 foliage, color, flowering, fruit, and final use, might be planted as commemorative 

 types of individual character, is a question belonging less to the comprehensive 

 design of this article than to the sesthetic details and ideal possibilities of sepul- 

 chral gardening. 



Numerous as are the varieties of moral and intellectual attribute, most of them 

 could be fitted with a living emblem from the countless growths of the forest. 

 The language of trees is universal, like that of a statue or a painting, and needs 

 no translation. In portrayals of scriptural character, inspiration frequently 

 retreats from the ihsufficiency of dry statement into the live language of typical 



* Rev. A. D. Giidley, Horticulturist, June, 1855. 



