applied to Public Cemeteries. 101 



or tortured allegories, jar upon the feelings of every well-regulated mind, and 

 excite ideas the very opposite to those of sympathy and tenderness. Our 

 cemeteries, then, should bear a solenm and soothing character, equally remote 

 from fanatical gloom and conceited aifectation. " {Pictoji, in Arch. Mag. iv. 

 p. 430.) 



" Where is it, would we ask," says the learned and eloquent author o^ JVe- 

 crojjoUs Glasguensis, " that the innate desire which is felt in every bosom to 

 live in the recollection of his companions, the pleasing hope that he may 

 still be a remembered denizen of this fleeting world, is more likely to be 

 realised than at the spot where his ashes are laid ? Where is it tliat the 

 ' E.rfincta amabitur,' such as Cicero professed to his daughter Tullia, and 

 which is still the pledge of friendship offered at the couch of the dying, is 

 more likely to be experienced in all its force and all its purity, than at the 

 tomb where all that remains of worth and loveHness is lying ? Where is it, 

 indeed, that the heart is likely to be so feelingly moved, or the memory to be 

 so powerfully roused, as at a parent's grave or at a sister's tomb?" (p. 27.) 

 After deploring the present state of Scottish churchyards, and contrasting 

 them with some in England and Wales, our author has the following touching 

 paragraphs on the Cemetery of Pere la Chaise, which, as the}' exhibit the 

 beau ideal of what a general cemetery ought to be, in order to realise our 

 ideas of its moral influence on the living, we shall quote as preferable to 

 anything that we could say on the subject. 



" Who, that has ever visited the romantic Cemetery of Pere la Chaise, would 

 not wish that there were, in this our native land, some more attractive spot 

 dedicated to the reception of the dead, than those vast fields of rude stones 

 and ruder hillocks, to which we are ever and anon called, when attending 

 the obsequies of a kinsman or companion ; that in fact there were here somt 

 such garden cemetery as that in the neighbourhood of Paris, whither the 

 widowed heart might occasionally resort to hold spiritual communion with 

 the departed partner of earthly joy or woe ; whither the weeping orphan 

 might at times repair, to recall the worth and the virtues of his beloved parent. 

 Within the extensive and delightfullj' variegated enclosure alluded to, situated 

 on Mount Louis, it is perhaps unnecessary to state that all the disagreeable 

 sensations which are here coupled with a churchyard are dispelled by the 

 beauty of the garden, the variety of its walks, by the romantic nature of its 

 situation, and, above all, by the commanding view of Paris and its environs 

 which it affords. In that vast grove of the dead, each has his own grave, and 

 each his own mausoleum. In place of the clumsy mound or large white 

 stone that so generally covers the ashes of our countrymen, is to be found a 

 little flower-garden surrounded by cedar, spruce, cypress, and yew trees, 

 round which the rose and the honeysuckle are seen entwining; while, instead 

 of a solitary and deserted churchyard, the eye meets at every turn with some 

 pensive or kneeling figure weeping over the remains of a relative, or wor- 

 shipping his God at the tomb of excellence and virtue. 



" The most common burial-places, and perhaps the most affecting, in this ce- 

 metery, consist of a square or parallelogram of ground, of about three or four 

 yards broad, enclosed by a neat little railing of iron or wicker-work. Within 

 this spot there is always a sepulchral urn, a small pillar, or a cross, to tell 

 the name and the quality of him who lies below. The remaining portion 

 is filled with flowers, and embellished with pots of rare plants. The more 

 ambitious monuments consist of obelisks, pyramids, temples, and marble sar- 

 cophagi, decorated ;vith figures and bassi rilievi; while a third consist of cr\pts 

 and family sepulchres in some degree similar to those of ancient Rome. Amid 

 the green glades and gloomy cypresses which surround and overshadow the 

 vast variety of sepulchral ornam.ents of Pere la Chaise, the contemplative mind 

 is not only impressed with sentiments of solemn sublimity and religious awe, 

 but with those of the most tender and heart-affecting melancholy. Vain man 

 is recalled from the distracting turbulence and folly of the world, to the sa- 

 lutary recollection 'of that undiscovered country from which no traveller 



