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Grmestones, 



of the globe. An example of a monument representing the manner 

 of an heroic death is found in the famous firemen's monument at 

 Greenwood — the statue of a fireman with a rescued child in his arms. 

 1 am not aware whether this represents an actual and particular oc- 

 currence, or is typical merely, and placed over the graves of brave fire- 

 men who have lost their lives in the performance of duty. This is an 

 instance so strongly appealing to the best sympathies of our nature, 

 that tht idea adopted is entirely right; but it may be questioned 

 whether it would not be better expressed in a high bas-relief. A most 

 offensive example of the imitation of common and prosaic things, I 

 once saw in a representation of a baby's worn pair of shoes chiselled on 

 a gravestone. Nothing could be worse than this — but the real arti- 

 cle, and that I once saw in a glass case on the top of a gravestone in a 

 country burying-ground. The imitation of animal life on gravestones 

 is usually prohibited by good art, oven when designed to be emblem- 

 atic. Let all the sentimental lambs be put into some other pasture 

 than the graveyard. Sentiment is admirable, but sentimentality is 

 sadly misplaced there. And do not let us have any doves and little 

 boys on ponies. An exception to this rule exists in the case of monu- 

 ments to public heroes, as for example the famous lion at Lucerne, 

 commemorating the devoted Swiss Guard who perished in defense of 

 Louis XVI, and a most touching example in the Troy cemetery, where, 

 at General Thomas' tomb, the eagle guards the patriot hero's sword. 

 We have outlived the conventional weeping willow, and I hope, the 

 broken flower and the broken rose-bud also. I am tired of broken 

 rose-buds, but in the contemplation of a canker-worm gnawing off a 

 rose-stem, on a monument at Newburyport, I experienced a more un- 

 comfortable feeling than fatigue. 



Our forefathers used alternately to terrify the survivor with skull 

 and cross-bones, and enchant him with a cherub's head at the top of 

 the gravestones, both usually equally terrific, by the way. All ob- 

 jects simply suggestive of death or decay should be ostracised. Of the 

 sarcophagus I have spoken. Urns, I am glad to observe, have pretty 

 much gone out of vogue, and the pall has had its day. Nothing more 

 incongruous can be conceived than an urn in a Christian burying- 

 ground, for cremation was a heathen custom, and if it should be re- 

 instated in favor, there would be no use for monuments except as re- 

 ceptacles for the urns, in which case the urn would no longer be in 

 sight. It is a pretty safe rule to dispense with all sorts of natural and 

 artificial objects in the ornamentation of tombstones. Of course the 

 rule, like every other, has its exceptions, but like all other exceptions 

 they simply tend to confirm the rule. The objection to such things 



