THE CHURCHYARD. 
2S9 
standing apart, with broad fields spreading on all sides, but no 
graves at hand. Some distance beyond, perhaps, you will come 
to a square enclosure, opening into the highwa}^ and this is the 
cemetery of the congregation. Small family burying-grounds, 
about the fields, are very common ; sometimes it is a retired spot, 
neatly enclosed, or it may be only a row of graves in one corner 
of the meadow, or orchard. Walking in the fields a while since, 
we were obliged to climb a stone wall, and on jumping down into 
the adjoining meadow, we found we had ahghted on a grave ; there 
were several others lying around near the fence, an unhewn stone 
at the head and foot of each humble hillock. This custom of 
burying on the farms had its origin, no doubt, in the peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the early population, thinly scattered over a wide 
countr}^, and separated by distance and bad roads from any place 
of pubhc worship. In this way the custom of making the graves 
of a family upon the homestead gradually found favor among the 
people, and they learned to look upon it as a melancholy gratifi- 
cation to make the tombs of the departed members of a family 
near the dwelling of the living. The increase of the population, 
and the improvement of the roads on one hand, with the changes 
of property, and the greater number of \dllages on the other, are 
now bringing about another state of things. Public cemeteries 
for parishes, or whole communities, are becoming common, while 
the isolated burial-places about the farms are more rare than they 
used to be. 
The few church-yards found among us are usually seen in the 
older parishes ; places of worship, recently built, very rarely have 
a yard attached to them. The narrow, crowded, abandoned 
church-yards, still seen in the heart of our older towns, have be- 
13 
