494 Rural Cemeteries. 



there his morning and evening lays, we should be pleasingly 

 affected by this spontaneous tribute to the memory of the 

 deceased. Should any one, taking a hint from this romantic 

 incident, carry out a Canary bird, and hang its cage on the 

 branch of a tree that extended over the grave of a friend, 

 that it might sing the requiem of the departed, who that 

 should see it would be affected with any other emotion but 

 that of the ludicrous ? Affection, that loves to surround the 

 dead with images borrowed from the skies, cannot be cheated 

 by its own artifices. 



There is one very simple and practicable means by which 

 flowers may be made to spring up around a grave without 

 resorting to cultivation. This is to procure the turfs, which 

 are to be placed on the surface of the ground, from some wild 

 pasture that is well sprinkled with violets, anemones, stars- 

 of-Bethlehem, and other flowers, which are not too rank in 

 their growth to injure the smoothness of the lawn. On be- 

 holding these, one could more easily imagine them to be the 

 free-ofterings of nature, because the means by which they 

 are reared there would not be so apparent, as if they were 

 exotics raised in well-spaded earth. Florists' flowers, though 

 exceeding all others in splendor, are not so interesting or 

 expressive, and, on this account, not so well adapted to cluster 

 around a grave as the simple flowers of the field. 



Beauty does not please in all situations ; or, it would be 

 better to say, that what is beauty in one place may be de- 

 formity in another. No person would say that the blush on 

 the cheek of an infant, separate from its countenance, is as 

 beautiful as a rose ; yet a perfect representation of a rose on 

 its cheek would be a deformity, while the blush is one of the 

 favorite marks of beauty. More than half the qualities in 

 any object that affect us with a sensation of beauty, consist 

 of pleasing suggestions which are forced upon the imagina- 

 tion : hence a beautiful color, placed where it would suggest 

 the idea of disease or monstrosity, would disgust instead of 

 conferring pleasure. 



The flowers that are cultivated in the borders and parterres 

 of our cemeteries are showy and splendid j but splendor does 



