Public Cemeteries and Public (iardcns 



The character of each of the three great cemeteries is 

 essentially distinct. Greenwood, the largest, and unques- 

 tionably the finest, is grand, dignified, and park-like. It 

 is laid out in a broad and simple style, commands noble 

 ocean views, and is admirably kept. Mount Auburn is 

 richly picturesque in its varied hill and dale, and owes its 

 charm mainly to this variety and intricacy of sylvan fea- 

 tures. Laurel Hill is a charming pleasure ground, filled 

 with beautiful and rare shrubs and flowers; at this season, 

 a wilderness of roses, as well as fine trees and monuments.* 



To enable the reader to form a correct idea of the influence 

 which these beautiful cemeteries constantly exercise on the 



others, the Cedar of Lebanon, the Deodar Cedar, the Paulowina, the 

 Araucaria, etc. Rhododendrons and Azaleas, were in full bloom; and 

 the purple Beeches, the weeping Ash, rare Junipers, Pines, and deciduous 

 trees were abundant in many parts of the grounds. Twenty acres of new 

 ground have just been added to this cemetery. It is a better arboretum 

 than can easily be found elsewhere in the country. -- A. J. D. 



* Few things are perfect; and beautiful and interesting as our rural 

 cemeteries now are, more beautiful and interesting than anything of the 

 same kind abroad, we cannot pass by one feature in all, marked by the 

 most violent bad taste; we mean the hideous ironmongery which they all 

 more or less display. Why, if the separate lots must be inclosed with 

 iron railings, the railings should not be of simple and unobtrusive, pat- 

 terns, we are wholly unable to conceive. As we now see them, by far 

 the greater part are so ugly as to be positive blots on the beauty of the 

 scene. Fantastic conceits and gimcracks in iron might be pardonable 

 as adornments of the balustrade of a circus or a temple of Comus; but 

 how reasonable beings can tolerate them as inclosures to the quiet grave 

 of a family and in such scenes of sylvan beauty is mountain high above 

 our comprehension. 



But this is not all; as if to show how far human infirmity can go, we 

 noticed lately several lots in one of these cemeteries, not only inclosed 

 with a most barbarous piece of irony, but the gate of which was positively 

 ornamented with the coat of arms of the owner, accompanied by a brass 

 doorplate, on which was engraved the owner's name and city residence! 

 All the world has amused itself with the epitaph on a tombstone in Pere 

 la Chaise, erected by a wife to her husband's memory in which, after 

 recapitulating the many virtues of Ihc departed, the bereaved one con- 

 cludes with --"his disconsolate widow still continues the business. No. 

 , Rose-street, Paris." We really have some doubts if the disconsolate 

 widow's epitaph advertisement is not in better taste than the cemetery 

 brass doorplate immortality of our friends at home. A. J. D. 



