372 Landscape Gardening 



delighted their inhabitants twenty years ago. Philadelphia 

 has, we learn, nearly twenty rural cemeteries at the present 

 moment, several of them belonging to distinct societies, 

 sects or associations, while others are open to all.* 



The great attraction of these cemeteries, to the mass of 

 the community, is not in the fact that they are burial 

 places or solemn places of mediation for the friends of the 

 deceased, or striking exhibitions of monumental sculpture, 

 though all these have their influence. All these might be 

 realized in a burial ground planted with straight lines of 

 willows and sombre avenues of evergreens. The true secret 

 of the attraction lies in the natural beauty of the sites and 

 in the tasteful and harmonious embellishment of these sites 

 by art. Nearly all these cemeteries were rich portions of 

 forest land, broken by hill and dale and varied by copses 

 and glades, like Mount Auburn and Greenwood, or old 

 country-seats richly wooded with fine planted trees, like 

 Laurel Hill. Hence, to an inhabitant of the town, a visit 

 to one of these spots has the united charm of nature and 

 art, - - the double wealth of rural and moral associations. 

 It awakens at the same moment the feeling of human 

 sympathy and the love of natural beauty implanted in 

 every heart. His must be a dull or a trifling soul that 

 neither swells with emotion nor rises with admiration at 

 the varied beauty of these lovely and hallowed spots. 



Indeed, in the absence of great public gardens, such as we 

 must surely one day have in America, our rural cemeteries 

 are doing a great deal to enlarge and educate the popular 

 taste in rural embellishment. They are for the most part 

 laid out with admirable taste; they contain the greatest 

 variety of trees and shrubs to be found in the country, 

 and several of them are kept in a manner seldom equalled 

 in private places, f 



\Ye made a rough calculation from some data obtained at Phila- 

 delphia lately, by which we find that, including Hie cost of the lots, more 

 than a million and a half dollars have been expended in the purchase and 

 decoration of cemeteries in that neighborhood alone. -- A. J. D. 



t Laurel Hill is especially rich in rare trees. \Ye saw last month almost 

 every procurable species of hardy tree and shrub growing there, among 



