XI 



ANY foreign writers have praised 

 our rural cemeteries without 

 reserve. The student of social 

 conditions says that they express 

 genuine poetic feehng as well as wise sani- 

 tary ideas, and the lover of art and Nature 

 finds them our most characteristic achieve- 

 ments in the art of gardening. Their size, 

 their park -like arrangement, their remoteness 

 from centres of population, and the neatness 

 with which they are kept, have often been 

 described as worthy of imitation in Euro- 

 pean countries. 



Certainly, as contrasted with the walled- 

 in, crowded, dreary, sun-baked, weed-grown 

 cemeteries one most often finds in Europe, 

 ours deserve great praise. But they are not 

 what they ought to be. Excellent in in- 

 tention, they are too often bad in execu- 

 tion. No expenditure of money or pains is 

 shunned, but grievous mistakes are made in 



