to be overlooked. When a multitude of bodies are interred side by side, and, as is 

 sometimes the case, one above another, it is impossible but that the surrounding air 

 should be tainted with a noxious effluvia. The atmosphere of a church can hardly be 

 wholesome, when the soil about it and beneath its floors is crowded with the decaying 

 relics of the dead. It can not be healthful to visit such places often, nor to live in their 

 immediate neighborhood. Much better is it to commit the remains of our dead to the 

 fresh earth, where the pure winds blow, and atnid flowers and verdure. 



Rural cemeteries also exert an important influence on the public taste. When prop- 

 erly laid out, they present to the eye a pleasing landscape adorned with trees and 

 shrubs and vines, with well-kept roads and walks, and tasteful monuments. All classes 

 in society can obtain easy access to them, and can learn by their own inspection how 

 beautiful is nature — how beautiful in her own simplicity, and also when her charms 

 are heightened by the hand of art. That such places will be visited by large numbers, 

 all experience shows. To say nothing of the multitudes who throng Pere la Chaise, 

 near Paris, and other cemeteries in Europe, we are told that the principal grounds of 

 this kind in our own country are resorted to annually by thousands. Laurel Ilill, near 

 Philadelphia, was visited in one year (1848) by upwards of 30,000, and Greenwood 

 and Mount Auburn by a still greater number. Nor do these thousands enter the gates 

 of our cemeteries to no good purpose. They are moved, it may be insensibly, with 

 pure and tender and lofty emotions, and they carry away w4th them finer tastes and 

 higher conceptions. The works of art here beheld, unlike those seen in some public 

 resorts, present nothing to inflame the passions or corrupt the heart. 



And this suggests another advantage of rural cemeteries — their influence on the 

 moral feelings. Can any good come from visiting the old-fashioned grave-yards, bar- 

 barously kept as many of them are ? Who has not been shocked at seeing their rude 

 hillocks, crowded together in dreary rows, perhaps grassless, or covered with rank 

 weeds and briars, their head-stones tilted over at all angles, or broken and prostrate ? 

 Was any one ever made better by walking through a burying-ground used as a sheep- 

 pasture, or left open to the street by a broken fence, or allowed to stand treeless and 

 shrubless, exposed to the glaring sun and howling wind? Such sights sadden us, 

 indeed ; but they do not mend our hearts. They remind us that we must die ; but 

 they also make us dread to die — dread to think that our bodies must be put into the 

 same festering earth, and be treated with the same neglect. 



But why clothe death with such unnecessary terrors? It is sad enough to turn 

 away from life and all we hold dear, without adding to the sadness by rendering the 

 grave an object of disgust and dismay? Rather, let us make o>ir burial-grounds pleas- 

 ant and attractive ; places where we shall be inclined to go often, to muse upon life 

 and its grandest concerns, and upon death and the glorious rewards awaiting the good 

 after death, — to reflect upon the virtues of those whose dust sleeps around us, and to 

 consider how we may imitate those virtues. The spirit of Themistocles was fired by 

 visiting the tombs of the illustrious dead. " The Romans buried their most honored 

 citizens along the Appian Way, that the youth as they entered the city might be 

 moved to emulate their virtues and shai'c their renown." The early Christians wor- 

 shipped near the graves of the martyrs, that they might be filled with their spirit 



so, may not we, while walking among the tombs of the good departed, 

 something of their spirit and be filled with aspirations after a better life ? 



