Gravestones. 



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dated a century back,or more,liave borders elaborate, carved with flowers 

 and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's heads,cross-bones,scythe8, 

 hour-glasses and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here 

 and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward. 

 These productions of gothic taste must have been quite beyond the 

 colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London, and 

 brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of 

 this lonely isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate 

 in the ordinary style without any superfluous flourishes to set otf the 

 bald inscriptions. But others — and those far the most impressive, 

 both to my taste and feelings — were roughly hewn from the gray rocks 

 of the island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends 

 and relatives. On some there were merely the initials of a name; 

 some were inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme in deep letters, 

 which the moss and wintry rain of many years had not been able 

 to obliterate. These, these were graves where loved ones slept ! It is 

 an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental 

 eulogies; but when affection and sorrow grave the letters with their 

 own painful labor, then we may be sure that they copy from the 

 record on their hearts." 



And in Judd's almost forgotten but powerful novel, " Margaret," 

 we read : 



" This spot, chosen and consecrated by the original colonists, and 

 used for its present purpose more than a century, was conspicuous 

 both for its elevation and its sterility. A sandy soil nourished the 

 yellow orchard grass that waved ghost-like from the mounds, and 

 filled all the intervals and the paths. No verdure, neither flower, 

 shrub nor tree, contributed to the agreeableness of the grounds, nor was 

 the bleak desolation disturbed by many works of art. There were 

 two marble shafts, a table of red sandstone, several very old head- 

 stones of similar materials, and more modern ones of slate. But here 

 lay the fathers, and there too must the children of the town ere long 

 be gathered, and it was a place of solemn feeling to all." 



In the reaction against Puritan asceticism, it is possible that in our 

 burying-grounds we are in danger of going to the opposite extreme, 

 and of detracting from the proper dignity of the place by making it 

 too much a theater for artistic display. In modern practice, the 

 cemetery is the pleasure-ground and park of the locality. It has the 

 finest site, the greatest abundance and variety of trees, the best roads, 

 the most picturesque lakes and water falls, the handsomest bridges, the 

 most inviting lodges and summer-houses, and every thing is contrived 

 to make us forget death. In short, the cemetery is now the perfection 

 of landscape gardening. In the midst of the beauties of natural 

 scenery, skillfully enhanced by art, it seems essential that the few ob- 

 jects designed to mark the proper use and purpose of the place should 

 be regulated by good taste and correct principles of art ; and that the 

 cultivated sense should not be shocked by obtrusive and inartistic 

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