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we deposit the remains of our friends in loathsome 

 vaults, or beneath the gloomy erypts and cells of our 

 churches, where the human foot is never heard, save 

 when the sickly taper lights some new guest to his 

 appointed apartment, and " lets fall a supernumerary 

 horror" on the passing procession ? Why should we 

 measure out a narrow portion of earth for our grave- 

 yards in the midst of our cities, and heap the dead 

 upon each other with a cold, calculating parsimony, 

 disturbing their ashes, and wounding the sensibilities 

 of the living ? Why should we expose our burying- 

 grounds to the broad glare of day, to the unfeeling 

 gaze of the idler, to the noisy press of business, to 

 the discordant shouts of merriment, or to the baleful 

 visitations of the dissolute ? Why should we bar up 

 their approaches against real mourners, whose deli- 

 cacy would shrink from observation, but whose ten- 

 derness would be soothed by secret visits to the grave, 

 and holding converse there with their departed joys ? 

 Why all this unnatural restraint upon our sympathies 

 and sorrows, which confines the visit to the grave to 

 the only time, in which it must be utterly useless — 

 when the heart is bleeding with fresh anguish, and is 

 too weak to feel, and too desolate to desire conso- 

 lation ? 



It is painful to reflect, that the Cemeteries in our 

 cities, crowded on all sides by the overhanging hab- 

 itations of the living, are walled in only to preserve 

 them from violation. And that in our country to^viis 

 they are left in a sad, neglected state, exposed to 

 every sort of intrusion, with scarcely a tree to shelter 



