486 Rural Cemeteries. 



of introduction into our gardens, but the above comprise the 

 most desirable. They are all easily raised from seeds, and 

 when they cannot readily be procured, we would advise the 

 planting of the acorns, which vegetate freely and soon make 

 fine trees. 



Art. II. Rural Cemeteries. By Wilson Flagg. 



The melancholy pleasure which is excited by a view of 

 tombs is common to men of an ordinary amount of cultiva- 

 tion. The cause of this pleasure it would be difficult to 

 explain, except on the supposition that melancholy, when 

 gently excited, is an agreeable emotion. Immediately, and 

 for some time after the death of a friend, the grief we suffer 

 is painful ; and it is only our veneration for the dead that 

 prevents our making a resolute effort to banish the subject of 

 it from the mind. This painful grief seldom endures a great 

 while, except in minds predisposed to insanity. As time 

 wears it away, it subsides into a quiet state of the mind, 

 which is termed melancholy by the poets, but is a very dif- 

 ferent sentiment from that to which the same term is applied 

 by medical writers. At this later period, the remembrance 

 of the virtues of our deceased friend, and of the many happy 

 hours we have passed together, forms an agreeable retrospect, 

 which is hallowed and made affecting by our subdued sorrow. 

 It is chiefly after this lapse of time that we delight in visiting 

 the grave of a departed friend, when we can indulge in pen- 

 sive reflections without the bitterness of recent grief. 



Mankind are generally horrified with anything that forcibly 

 suggests to them an idea of death. But the contemplation 

 of tombs gives rise to an agreeable melancholy that over- 

 comes this natural horror of death, especially when associated 

 with certain fanciful images emblematical of peace and im- 

 mortality. This sentiment is more vividly awakened in an 

 old graveyard than in a new one, and in a simple graveyard, 

 surrounded by trees, than in one where the artificial objects 

 that are placed over the dead are monuments of the wealth 



