CHURCH-YARDS AND CEMETERIES 227 



when he learns to approach the decoration of his grounds 

 as he would the canvas of the picture — and are not the 

 church-yard and burial plot most truly his grounds? — he 

 will come to feel very much as the author does in rela- 

 tion to the use of different trees, shrubs, and vines, and 

 not smile indulgently at what he may at first think an 

 over-refinement of sentiment. 



Continuing, therefore, the same line of thought, 

 there are, for instance, no kinds of vines that suit the 

 gray stone or red brick walls of a church so well as 

 the sober English ivy, and the broad, smooth, dark- 

 green Japan ivy, yet care should be taken to keep the 

 church from being covered entirely with encroaching 

 tendrils, for half the charm of the climber lies in the 

 contrast it makes with the color of the stone or brick 

 of the building. 



Feeling thus profoundly the inharmonious influence in 

 the church-yard of certain kinds of trees and shrubs, and 

 above all of showy flowers borne by herbaceous or climb- 

 ing plants, we would naturally fail to contemplate with 

 any degree of satisfaction pretentious, cumbersome mon- 

 uments in church-yards and cemeteries. When hoary 

 with age, half-falling or partially broken, they jar on 

 us less, but no broken or decayed thing can be really 

 restful or peaceful in its influence, any more than the 

 mere expensiveness of the glaringly ugly new monu- 

 ment or tombstone, that speaks of living prosperity in 

 its worst aspects, can give rise to that peaceful melan- 

 choly so much to be desired for the associations that 

 should dwell about the burying-ground. It is fortunate, 

 therefore, that fashionable taste for tombstones and 

 monuments of the more vulgar kind has seemed for some 

 time to be waning, and it is a growth of the sentiment 



