applied to Public Cemeteries. 219 



the space is enclosed by highly wrought iron railings, and superb architectural 

 and sculptural compositions fixed against the wall. Sometimes the wliole is 

 covered by an architectural canopy, supported on stone columns. The ar- 

 chitecture is of the time of the Jameses, elaborate in composition, rich in 

 decoration, and learned, scriptural, heraldic, or quaint, in inscription ; and there 

 is nothing offensive in the mode of inhumation . In our opinion, it is in far 

 better taste for a family to expend money in purchasing as much ground in the 

 open part of a cemetery as will allow the husband and wife, and some of their 

 children, if they have any, making an allowance for a certain number of both 

 sexes to die young, and of the females to die unmarried, to be buried side by side, 

 than to expend it on burying in vaults or catacombs, or even on expensive 

 monuments. In the cemeteries about London we frequently see monu- 

 ments that have cost upwards of a hundred pounds placed over what are 

 called family brick graves, in which, perhaps, have been deposited one over 

 the other, without intervening soil or flag-stones hermetically sealed, the 

 half dozen bodies constituting the family, so as to form a mass of putre- 

 faction appalling to contemplate ; more especially as contrasted with the 

 chaste marble sarcophagus or other monument placed over it. Such a disgust- 

 ing mode of interment, to which men have been driven by various causes, 

 which have led to charges so high that they cannot be borne, is not for a 

 moment to be compared with the interment of a family side by side in the free 

 soil. There is nothing at all offensive in the latter mode ; nothing to hinder 

 such interments from taking place in a shrubbery or pleasure-ground, or a flower- 

 garden. If the citizens of London were to reflect on this, instead of laying 

 out a large sum on a brick grave or a vault, and afterwards on a monument to 

 be placed over it, they would lay it out in purchasing a greater extent of 

 territorial surface, and in enclosing this surface in such a manner as to mark it 

 for their own. The family name, deeply cut on the stone forming the coping 

 or finish of the enclosing barrier, would say more for the taste of the owner, 

 than a thousand pounds laid out on a monument over a vault or brick grave. 

 The most desirable part of a cemetery for small grave enclosures of this 

 kind is against the boundary wall, as at Grey Friars in Edinburgh, the Glasgow 

 Cathedral, and the old burying-ground at Munich ; but it is singular that, in 

 almost all the new London cemeteries, this very desirable situation for graves 

 and monuments is occupied by a belt of trees, as if the cemetery were to be 

 laid out exactly on the same plan as Brown's parks, with their surrounding 

 belts and interspersed clumps. 



If men of landed property, however small its extent, were to reflect on this 

 subject, we are persuaded they would greatly prefer laying their bones in a 

 suitable spot in theu- own grounds, to having them piled up in any family 

 grave, vault, or catacomb whatever. 



It ought to be a general rule to place handsome monuments at particular 

 points of view ; such as at angles formed by the junction or intersection of 

 roads or walks, terminations^o straight walks, points seen from the entrances 

 and from the chapel, &c. 



One of the most important rules respecting monuments is, that they be all 

 placed on solid foundations of masonry reaching as deep as the bottom of the 

 grave, by the means already described (p. 157.), or by other equally efficient 

 means. A rectangular tomb over a brick grave will, of course, rest on the 

 side walls of the grave ; but over a common earth grave it will require to be 

 supported, either by four pillars carried up from the bottom of the grave, 

 or by two pillars at each end, founded 2 or 3 feet deep in the soil, and 2 or 

 3 feet distant from the edge of the grave. In this way rectangular tombs, or 

 any description of large monument, may be placed over earth graves of any 

 depth whatever, and in cases where it would be practically impossible to 

 carry up pillars from the bottom of the grave. 



It is never desirable to form two graves adjoining each other at the same 

 time, or even after a shorter period than two or three years; because the 

 narrow partition of firm soil between them is apt to give way. However, 



