313 



in sepulchral monuments, and placed near the surface 

 of the earth, they experience no material change. 1 

 could easily refer to a number of church yards in the 

 northern states, where monumental tables of these 

 materials, consecrated to the dead, have lain for more 

 than a hundred winters, buried in snow and ice ; yet 

 every letter of their inscriptions remains unimpaired 

 or almost as legible as when cut, except being covered 

 with moss.* 



Surely the pious act of rearing these humble monu- 

 ments, and sculpturing them with pathetick strains, in 

 prose and verse, to portray and perpetuate the amiable 

 qualities of our departed ancestors, could add nothing 

 to the durability of the materials. How is it then, 

 that this substance, when employed for useful purposes 

 is rendered so much more capable of resisting the 

 operations of times and seasons, than when lying in 

 its original bed, where it is supposed to be fast crumb- 

 ling down to sand and dust, to form, or at least to be- 

 come tributary to the soil ? 



Certainly there must have been some deception in 

 this business, or some mistake in the calculations that 

 have been made on that subject, and which I shall 

 notice in the sequel; for if letters inscribed upon it 

 can remain exposed flat upon the surface of the 



* In describing the monuments in a church-yard at Dalmallj, in 

 Scotland, it is said that " the most modern one of the number, on 

 which was sculptured a crucifix, was judged to be 500 years old ; 

 yet, though of steatite or lapis ollaris, was free from decomposi- 

 tion." Travels of M. Faujas de St. Fond, vol. I. page 289. 



