CHURCHYARDS THEN AND NOW SOI 



education that would show them that the thing is a 

 vulgarity in itself; and that its flashing glass, repeated all 

 over the churchyard, is a flagrant violation of its precious 

 heritage of beauty and repose. One respects and admires 

 the evident intention of the poor persons who desire in 

 this way (not knowing better) to show affection for their 

 dead ; but one still more respects and admires the good 

 taste and firmness of the rector or vicar — whose freehold 

 the churchyard is, and whose duty it is to maintain its 

 dignity and decency — who refuses to allow this kind of 

 unworthy and meretricious ornament to be placed upon 

 its consecrated soil. 



After all, these vulgar things represent but a cheap 

 Avay of honouring the dead ; cheap in money and cheaper 

 still in trouble. Once bought and placed they are no 

 trouble to those who place them. It is quite another 

 matter when real flowers are brought and arranged upon 

 a grave by loving hands. 



If some of our people could see a French cemetery, 

 with all its horrors of bad taste, vulgarity, and absurdity, 

 they would, I think, cease even to wish to place these 

 things upon graves. For these artificial wreaths have come 

 to us from abroad, and are a part of a series of memorial 

 articles that include even worse — wreaths of beadwork, 

 everlasting flowers arranged in the stiffest and hardest way. 

 and erections like dolls'-bouses filled with photographs in 

 frames, and cheap rubbishy articles of every description. 



These evils arise from the fact that in a French cemetery 

 — 1 do not know how it may be in a parish churchyard— 

 the ground is bought by a family ' in perpetuity,' and the 

 owner of the plot may do as he will with it. 



In England we have not only the precious tradition of 



