332 



Gravestones, 



Dot redeem and inspire like a church. Almost under the shadow of 

 pretentious monuments, fanylies are starving and freezing. If God 

 has given a man abundance of this world's goods, and he wishes to 

 erect a monument to himself, let him build in charity, in religion, in 

 love, and let him attach his name to the donation, if - he is in dread of 

 being forgotten, but do not let him heap up a pile in the cemetery, 

 which will only call attention to his vanity and selfishness, and fre- 

 quently to his smallness- 1 have noticed that the size and cost of 

 mortuary monuments are generally in invei'se proportion to the moral 

 and intellectual worth of the builder. A man who made a fortune in 

 pills or petroleum will cause a chapel to be erected over his grave, 

 which will cost more money than Milton, Michael Angelo and Beetho- 

 ven got for all their works. It is not for all to fulfill the Eoman 

 poet's boast, that he would build for himself a monument more lasting 

 than brass. It is not of every one that posterity will say, as it says 

 of the architect of St. Paul's, *^If you seek his monument, look 

 about you." Xor will the most lavish outlay on our part preserve our 

 monuments or our memory. The most magnificent monument ever 

 erected, that of Mausolus, King of Caria, which was one of the seven 

 wonders of the world, has long since disappeared, and Mausoleum" 

 calls up no suggestion of the origin of the word or image of the 

 monument. To whose memory were the Pyramids erected? In 

 contemplating the Castle of St. Angelo, we forget that it was the 

 mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. The tomb of Cecilia Metalla 

 survives two thousand years of Roman history ; but the poet Byron, 

 at the close of five magnificent stanzas devoted to conjecture upon 

 the woman in whose memory the grand pile was erected, can only 

 say : 



*' But whither would conjecture stray ? 



Thus much alone we know, Metalla died, 

 The wealthiest Roman's wife ; behold his love or pride : " 



On the other hand the mound of Marathon is imperishable, and so 

 is the deed which it commemorates. The simple slab on Bunker Hill, 

 inscribed Here Warren fell," is more attractive to the pilgrim than 

 the towering obelisk under whose shadow it lies. What monument 

 more touching than the little flag which a grateful country annually 

 plants on the graves of the heroes and patriots who died that we might 

 live ? In the Troy cemetery has recently been erected the hugest 

 monolith of modern times, at an outlay of $50,000, over the grave of 

 General Wool, a man who it is safe to say will not loom up in very 

 large proportions in historical perspective. In contrast with this is a 



