102 Principles of Landscaiie-Gardening 



returns.' The gay and the giddy are reminded that their 'gibes and jokes' 

 mast ere while tor ever cease, and are led to reflect that they too must die; 

 and, as ' by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better,' the 

 religious man, instructed on the narrowness of the boundary which separates 

 him from those who were the 'sun and centre' of his nearest and dearest 

 regards on earth, looks forward not only without fear, but with joy and 

 exultation, to the period when, that boundary being for ever broken down, 

 they shall, in their happy experience, find that, as they were loving and be- 

 loved in their lives, ' in their deaths they were not divided.' In the mazes of 

 Pere la Chaise, we feel walking as in the porch of eternity, and our heart is at 

 once impressed with a sense of the evanescence and the value of time. There, 

 the instability of all human affairs is emphatically and eloquently taught by 

 the dread silence of the tomb, and unequivocally beheld in the mere change 

 which a few years have produced on the garden itself ; for, within the stately 

 mansion whose ruins are now on evei'y side surrounded by melancholy tombs, 

 did the favourite confessor of Louis XIV., the most powerful and most per- 

 secuting Jesuit-of his time, erst pass his hours of pastime and of pleasure ; and 

 the disciples of Jansenius and Molina now repose, in freedom and in peace, in 

 that place to which, when alive, they did not dare even to approach; while 

 the fierce disputes which they mutually excited through the Christian world 

 are fallen, like themselves, into neglect and obhvion !* 



" In Scotland it is of every-day occurrence, to find the lie given to the most 

 pompous monuments, a few months after their erection, by the moss over- 

 growing and obscuring the epitaph which vows and intends unceasing re- 

 membrance of the dead. In the Cemetery of Mount Louis, however, the 

 feeling of recollection is exemplified to live a very long time after the en- 

 graving of the sepulchral stone and the wonted period prescribed to outward 

 mourning. It is there the custom for surviving friends to visit the tombs of 

 their relatives, and, as a token of recollection and respect to their memory, to 

 weave a garland of flowers, and hang it on their monument. At every turn 

 the eye is arrested by the tender proof of some late friendly visitation. 

 Flowers, as yet fresh and unfaded, are seen scattered over the not yet verdant 

 sod. The greenhouse myrtle flourishes in the parterre dedicated to affection 

 and love ; the chaste forget-me-not blooms over the ashes of a faithful friend ; 

 the green laurel shades the cenotaph of the hero ; and the drooping willow, 

 planted by the hand of the orphan, weeps over the grave of the parent. 

 Every thing is there tasteful, classical, poetical, and eloquent. In that asylum 

 of death, there is nothing found save that which should touch the heart -or 

 soothe the afflicted soul, nothing save that which should awaken tender re- 

 collections or excite religious feelings. In one word, the Cemetery of Pere 

 la Chaise is the spot, of all others, dedicated to the genius of memory; and 

 the one where a more powerful sermon is daily preached than ever fell from 

 the lips of a Fenelon, a Massillon, or a Bossuet. Here the bodies of the 



" * It is from this confessor, Pere la Chaise, that the cemetery derives its 

 appellation. By an edict in 1804, prohibiting burial in churches and inha- 

 bited places, the garden and pleasure-grounds of the late confessor were con- 

 verted into a burial-ground, chiefly for those persons of a higher circle who 

 could afford to purchase a grave and rear a monument ; and, at this moment 

 [1831], the whole of this extensive enclosure is nearly covered with tombs 

 and monuments. [We have seen a Report on this cemetery, made to the 

 French Government, dated 1842, by which it appears to be so much crowded 

 as to require enlargement, and also that much ground has been lost in con- 

 sequence of its not having been laid out originally on some systematic plan. 

 In this Report the want of walks and roads, and of drainage, is particularly 

 deplored, as well as the dilapidated and decaying state of the monuments.] 



