The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 107 



tombs. It is somewhat different in the portions devoted to the 

 graves of those who could command money when they moved 

 about on the surface, and such as passed on their way to the grave 

 through the paths of fame or glory. In their case, a little chapel, 

 a ponderous tomb, or something of the kind, usually protects for 

 a little time the dust of particular individuals from mingling with 

 the common clay of their poorer relatives, and affords shelter to the 

 crosses of silver and little objects of art, and a little more perma- 

 nence to the wreaths. But what a very wide difference between 

 this portion and that in which the ground is not paid for in per- 

 petuity ! Here the dust is allowed to lie undisturbed (at all events, 

 till they want to make a railway through it, or the gardening taste 

 of a future age directs the surface to be levelled and planted with 

 horrid taste as a garden, as has been recently done in several cases 

 in London), and the earth is not merely a deodorizing medium, as it 

 would appear to be in other divisions. In the select parts, in addi- 

 tion to small statuary, &c., you frequently see choice forced flowers 

 placed on the tombs, and one cold February day I saw a dame, 

 evidently a nurse or respectable servant, sitting weeping by the costly 

 tomb of a young woman buried that day twelvemonth, which tomb 

 she had almost covered with large bunches of white forced Lilac, 

 and beautiful buds of roses. But remove to the wide spaces, where 

 the poorer people bury their dead out of their sight, and you will 

 see a most business-like mode of sepulture. A. very wide trench, 

 or fosse, is cut, wide enough to hold two rows of coffins placed 

 across it, and 100 yards long or so. Here they are rapidly stowed in 

 one after another, just as nursery labourers lay in stock "by the 

 heels," only much closer, because there is no earth between the 

 coffins, and wherever the coffins (they are very like soap-boxes, 

 only somewhat less substantial) happen to be short, so that a 

 little space is left between the two rows, those of children are 

 placed in lengthwise between them to economize space ; the whole 

 being done exactly as a natty man would pack together turves or 

 Mushroom spawn bricks. This is the fosse commwie, or grave of 

 the humbler class of people, who cannot afford to pay for the 



