212 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



close and lovingly, and the small creeping ivy tries to 

 cover. This which has been added to it is but a 

 part of its beauty : you see that its lines are graceful, 

 that they were made so ; that the inscription " Here 

 lyeth the body," &c. is not cut in letters hi use in 

 newspapers and advertising placards, and have there- 

 fore no common nor degrading associations, but are 

 letters of other forms, graceful, too, in their lines ; 

 and that above the inscription there are sculptured 

 and symbolic figures and lines emblems of mortality, 

 eternal hope, and a future life heads of cherubs, 

 winged and blowing on horns, and the sun and wings ; 

 skulls and crossbones, and hour-glass and scythe; the 

 funeral urn and weeping-willow ; the lighted torch ; the 

 heart in flames, or bleeding, or transfixed with arrows ; 

 the angel's trumpet, the crown of glory, the palm and 

 the lily, the laurel leaf, and many more. 



Did we think this art, or this custom, too little a 

 thing to cherish any longer ? I cannot find any 

 person with a word to say about it. I have tried 

 and the result was curious. I have invited persons of 

 my acquaintance into an old churchyard and begged 

 them to look on this stone and on this the hard ugli- 

 ness of one, an insult to the dead, and the beauty, the 

 pathos, of the other. And they have immediately 

 fallen hi to a melancholy silence, or else they have 

 suddenly become angry, apparently for no cause. But 

 the reason probably was that they had never given a 

 thought to the subject, that when they had buried 



