io8 The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 



ground. I am not certain what becomes of the remains of these 

 poor people after the lapse of a short time, but by some means 

 or other the ground is soon prepared for another crop. On this 

 principle, "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep" but a very 

 short time in their last bed, and there is a very wide difference 

 indeed between " sickle and crown " in P^re la Chaise. 



One day, when in the Cemetery of Mont Parnasse, I saw them 

 making a new road, the bottom being made with broken headstones, 

 many of them bearing the date of i860 and thereabouts. These had 

 been placed on ground that had not been paid for in perpetuity, 

 and were consequently grubbed up when, as before described, they 

 want to fill the trenches a second time. I have read and admired 

 Lyell's illustration, that " all flesh is grass" — the passage in which 

 he tells us about a graveyard being undermined by the sea on the 

 eastern coast, and a stone inscribed to "perpetuate" the memory of 

 somebody being knocked and ground about by the waves on the 

 beach — but never fully knew what a poor, transient, weedy kind of 

 grass is the flesh of the lords of creation till I became acquainted with 

 Parisian cemeteries. A cutting thirteen or fourteen feet wide, with 

 the earth thrown up in high banks at each side, a priest standing 

 at one part near a slope formed by the slight covering thrown over 

 the buried of that day, and, frequently, a little crowd of mourners 

 and friends, bearing a coffin. They hand it to the man in the 

 bottom of the trench, who packs it beside the others without 

 placing a particle of earth between ; the priest says a few words, 

 and sprinkles a few drops of water on the coffin and clay j some of 

 the mourners weep, but are soon moved out of the way by 

 another little crowd, with its dead, and so on till the long and wide 

 trench is full. They do not even take the trouble to throw a little 

 earth against the last coffins put in, but simply put a rough board 

 against them for the night. Those places not paid for in perpetuity 

 are completely cleared off, dug up, and used again after a few 

 years. The wooden crosses, little headstones, and countless orna- 

 ments are cleared off, thrown in great heaps, the crosses and con- 

 sumable parts being, I believe, sent to the hospitals as fuel. The 



