106 



CHURCH GARDENS AND CEMETERIES. 



therefore the designer was free to do as lie liked -with the 

 ground. In this country there are numbers of city grave- 

 yards which, now disused, ought sooner or later to be 

 tui-ned into gardens, but gardens of a peculiar kind. 



In some places they have commenced rooting up the 

 graveyards, not merely where the tunnelling power of a 

 railway company is brought to bear, but in places untouched 

 in this way, and where the thing is done for mere love of 

 " improvement.^-' Evergreen shrubs are proverbially fond 

 of London smut. The visitor to London who observes 

 such matters can hardly fail to be struck with their 

 luxuriance in front of Tattersalfs, and many other spots in 

 which they have been planted at some expense. The 

 verdant and luxuriant aspect of these places has had its effect 

 upon the chm^chwardens and powers that be, and accordingly 

 they have set to work to beautify our graveyards. Ever- 

 greens are to be substituted for headstones, and lamentable 

 bits of cockney-gardening for the memorials of the dead. 

 The most notable instance of this kind with which I am 

 acquainted is around the church in Bishopsgate-street. 

 Tombs and headstones appear to have been cleared out of 

 the way and all obstructions removed, so that a level surface 

 might be obtained on which to set a few hundred evergreens, 

 which have little more chance of flourishing in Bishopsgate- 

 street than if planted in the Salt Lake. To have the bones or 

 memorials of one'sfriends disturbedfor the ill-digested schemes 

 of a jobbing gardener is bad enough ; but when it is considered 

 that this sacrilege is performed to plant subjects that have no 

 chance of thriving, then the wisdom of the change is fully seen. 

 It is true the sculpture in our cemeteries is anything but 

 Greek, and the inscriptions are not quite so simple and elegant 

 as those in the catacombs ; but the rudest and most mono- 

 tonous of them tell of love and death " where human harvests 

 grow,'"' and to all but the most vulgar minds must be sacred 

 and beautiful. What, then, must be the feelings of those who 

 have had the memorials of friends and ancestors disturbed 

 for such a purpose ? It is enough to draw an anathema from 

 a less ready rhymer than the one who wrote " Cursed be 

 he who moves my bones V And it is the more inexcusable 



