Rural Cemeteries. 487 



and vanity of the living. People are attracted, in multitudes, 

 to a burial-place that is covered with gewgaws and expensive 

 follies ; but they go there to gratify their curiosity, not to 

 yield up their hearts to pensive reflection. The emblems of 

 grief and of the relations of time and eternity are picturesque 

 and afl'ecting ; those of vanity are grotesque and ridiculous ; 

 and when vanity is conspicuous among the tombs, the spec- 

 tator turns aside with indignation and disgust. 



It is not many years since our modern rural cemeteries 

 were first established. An innate sense of the superior effect 

 of tombs, when allied with the beautiful in nature and art, 

 first suggested the advantage of such grounds. There was 

 also a necessity for burying the dead of our cities in the 

 suburbs ; this latter part of their original purpose has been 

 eff'ected. But there are some imperfections in the manner of 

 carrying out the original design of our rural cemeteries; which 

 are fair subjects of criticism and satire. In many important 

 respects, relating to their moral and religious objects, they are 

 failures. They exhibit too many sad attempts to carry the 

 arbitrary distinctions of social life down to the grave ; and 

 when I behold them, I am affected with a sensation of the 

 ludicrous, which expels every feeling of sympathy or so- 

 lemnity. 



These imperfections exist chiefly in the character of par- 

 ticular objects, rather than in the general style of laying out 

 the grounds. I do not know that the latter could be im- 

 proved. The general disposition of the paths and sites 

 would produce an admirable effect, were the objects con- 

 tained within the grounds designed with equal taste. The 

 cause of this imperfection in the details, and of the superior- 

 ity of the general plan, may be apparent, when we consider 

 that the former are the works of different individuals, many 

 of whom must be very defective in judgment, while the 

 latter has been almost uniformly the work of one or two 

 persons of taste and refined education. 



It is a task reguiring, perhaps, the highest effort of genius 

 to combine the works of nature and art, wherever there is a 

 multiplicity of objects, in such a manner as to produce in the 



