THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
39 
The remains of the great Fontaine were interred 
in this cemetery as early as 1804, having been re- 
moved from the Holy Innocents. Near this grave 
is the tomb of Moliere, and both are enclosed by a 
rather high iron railing. We noticed many of these 
railings, sometimes enclosing a single grave, and 
again used as a sort of decoration on top of a tomb 
or monument, while the general tributes of love and 
remembrance are tawdry bead wreaths, sometimes 
a nunlber on one grave; as compared with the pro- 
fusion of natural flowers scattered over the graves 
of our own dead, these seemed fantastic and un- 
sightly in the extreme. 
In the Jewish quarter of the cemetery we found 
the famous chapel of the Rothschilds, overshadowed 
by some handsome trees, and near it a tomb ol 
Egyptian design, to the memory ot Rachel, the re- 
nowned actress, also the grave of Fould, the French 
statesman. In a beautiful spot, fragrant with 
natural flowers and surrounded by a hedge of ivy, 
though with no monument of any sort, lie the re- 
mains of Marshal Ney, who, with his troops, turned 
against his king and espoused the cause of Napol- 
eon, and was afterwards arrested, condemned and 
shot. Near one of the entrances are the graves of 
the tender poet, De Musset, under a drooping wil- 
low, and the composer, Rossini. 
One peculiar monument, we noticed, had six 
hands carved in marble, which in the deaf and dumb 
alphabet spell the name of Secard, the good abbe, 
who did so much for these afflicted people. 
It is quite a relief to follow up a visit to Pere 
La Chaise, as soon as may be, by a ramble through 
one of own our modern American cemeteries ; to 
stroll over velvety lawns, around dainty knolls, in and 
out of winding avenues, alive with the warbling of 
happy b'rds, and beautiful natural flowers, the 
many fine trees and shrubs, the clear lakes, the fine 
monuments, with an utter absence of railings or 
fences, and the amount of space, convey a feeling 
of rest and freedom ; and a dreamy peace steals 
over one, a serene calm and restful happiness, and 
death, the “grim destroyer,” is robbed of its ghast- 
liness, and here presented in an almost tender 
aspect. ■ P. H. Kerby. 
A Plea for Slate Headstones. 
Whoever visits the cemeteries of the land — and 
there are few of us who are not brought thither from 
time to time upon the saddest of errands — cannot 
but be struck by the unfortunate results which have 
attended the efforts of sorrowing friends to do honor 
to the dead. Most cemeteries are to the eye mere 
collections of unhappy specimens of the stone-cut- 
ter’s art, or rather of his want of art. They are un- 
couth where they should be graceful, oppressive 
where they shouVl be soothing, aggressive and con- 
spicuous where they should be simple and incon- 
spicuous; they in one way or another violate all the 
principles of symmetry and artistic propriety, and 
only too often they are vulgar monstrosities of stone, 
which serve to advertise the stone-cutter and to dis- 
figure the graves of the dead. 
When one considers that all these stones are put 
here to mark an affection which death could not 
conquer; that they stand for so much love and sor- 
row, it makes the heart ache to feel the incongruity 
between the hard, vulgar monument and the thing 
they are meant to signify. Says a writer in the J^os- 
toii Courier, marble is cold in color and texture. It 
is quickly discolored, so that it is unsightly and of- 
fensive to the eye, the effect of time being less 
pleasing than in the case of almost any other stone 
that could be chosen. Granite is coarse and of un- 
pleasant texture if unpolished, while the high look- 
ing-glass surface that results from polishing it is the 
most vulgar in effect that the ingenuity of the stone- 
cutter has thus far been able to compass. Sand- 
stone is pleasant to the eye, but it so quickly loses 
the words which affection has committed to its keep- 
ing that it is hardly to be counted among the ma- 
terials available for this purpose. 
In view of these facts there seems nothing better 
to do than to return to the custom of our fathers and 
return to the use of slate. There is nothing which 
more satisfactorily stands our climate, both in re- 
spect to durability and to appearance. To the eye 
the soft, low tone of the stone is always pleasant, 
and the material is one which has the great merit of 
not seeming to lend itself readily to those ornate and 
obtrusive structures of which so many specimens un- 
fortunately disfigure the cities of the dead through- 
out the country. The finer varieties, fine and vel- 
vety of texture, are capable of receiving carvings of 
delicacy and intricacy, and of preserving them 
through the trying weather of our destructive win- 
ters. On the whole, there is no other stone so satis- 
factory for this use, audit is a pit}^ that it should not 
be more generally adopted. There is at some ceme- 
teries, a foolish regulation forbidding the erection 
of slate tablets, but the rule is fortunately not a 
general one, and so thoroughly is the public tired of 
the use of marble and granite that there is every rea- 
son to believe that it will soon return to the good 
old custom of the early days of New England, when 
necessity and common sense combined to hold peo- 
ple to a fashion which was the best that has ever ob- 
tained in the matter of gravestones in this country. 
By the adoption of urn burial, all that relates 
to the artistic embellishment of a cemetery would 
be at once placed on a very different footing. — 
God's Acre Beautiful. 
