1826.] [ 409°] 
"ON THE CHEERFULNESS OF SEXTONS. 
Tue duty of a sexton has now become a profession, and in some 
places a lucrative one. He stands between the dead and the living, 
and no power changes his fiat but that of the archangel and the resur- 
rection-man. When the sexton’s business is done, he cares but little 
which of those two authorities has the precedence. 
There was something exquisitely sacred in the old custom of sepul- 
chre in the private garden, or other chosen spot of the deceased, or 
under his own hearth-stone—the scene of many of his joys and sorrows ; 
—but all these habits, so grateful to the kindlier feelings of humanity, 
have given way, and their flight has brought amongst us a cheerful set 
of men, whose business it is to keep and till God's field, or God’s-aker, 
as the old Germans used to denominate a church-yard. 
I never knew a sexton who was not a cheerful man. Some are, of 
course, born with cheerful minds; some become cheerful by conversa- 
tion with cheerful people; but for the most part they are cheerful by 
reason of their occupation. The church-yard is a cheerful place ; the 
earth-worm, by his movement, seems to be a cheerful animal; the 
flowers and verdure are objects and motives to cheerfulness; the 
epitaphs and emblems are inducements to gentle reflection ; hope waves 
her pinions over the whole spot and its associations, brightening the pre- 
sent and glorifying the future. 
Our ancestors understood and felt these things much better than we 
do. Old Weever,in his “ Discourse on Funerall Monuments,” observes, 
*« they accustomed yearely to garnishe, decke, and adorne the tombes 
or graues of the dead with poesies, crownes, and garlandes of all sorts 
of flowers. Husbands were wont to strew, spread, or scatter ouer and 
upon the graues and sepulchres of their deare wiues, violets, roses, 
hyacinths and diuers simple flowers; by the which uxorious office they 
did mitigate and lessen the griefe of their heartes, conceiued by the 
losse of their louing beddefellowes. The like expression of mutual loue 
the wiues shewed to their buried husbandes. The antient Ethnicks did 
hold the springinge of flowers from the graue of a deceased friend an 
argument of his happiness, and it was their vniuersal wish that the 
tombe-stones of their dead friends might be light unto them; and that 
a perpetual springe-tide of all kindes of fragrant flowers might incircle 
their verdant graues.” 
Although much of this peculiar feeling and practice is now gone by, 
yet in country-places remote from populous towns the same spirit is still 
somewhat alive; and instead of church-yards being gloomy and 
neglected places, they are often trimly decked: even the lowliest 
Cette are bound over with willows and osiers, and the whole scene 
ooks like a place of enduring and eternal repose, where affection wan- 
ders to feed on hope, and memory revels in enjoyment of the past. 
The sexton is the gardener who cultivates and cherishes the fairest 
flowers—for what fairer flowers can there be than the memories of the 
wise and good, and gentle and amiable ? They are amaranthine flowers, 
and breathe of spring and summer-tide all the year round. The fancy 
gardener plumes himself upon this fine tulip, or that delicate ranunculus, 
and exultingly explains to his auditors the qualities of each—the nicety 
of its culture, and the rarity of the stock. The gardener of the graves 
luxuriates equally amidst his descriptions of his garden’s pride, and 
M.M. New Series.—Vot. II. No. 10. 3G 
