92 
THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
merit, but rather a vice. A painting for the parlor, 
or a statue for the lawn, if, after familiar study it 
proves a disappointment (and how often is this the 
case!) may easily be gotten rid of; a monument 
tliat is not satisfactory, is of all things the most per- 
sistently unsatisfactory. Therefore urge upon your 
lot-owners to take time in its selection; this is not a 
matter requiring haste; on the contrary it is a mat- 
ter requiring the most thoughtful and studious de- 
liberation. Impress upon them that any one who 
seeks to hasten their decision, does so because his 
own schemes will not bear investigation. You have 
your lot-owners’ confidence: — do not abuse it by re- 
fraining, through diffidence or timidity, from using 
your influence to prevent his making a mistake that 
not only himself, but his children to the remotest 
generation, are sure to regret. 
beauty of Design may be resolved into three 
elements, viz: Fitness, Harmony of Outline, and 
Repose. 
Fitness. The adaptation of the structure to its 
])urpose and to its environment. Thus the Colon- 
ial style of architecture, though ugly in itself, be- 
comes beautiful by reason of its pre-eminent fitness 
in home-building; conversely, the Grecian orders 
which, abstractly, have been the world’s ideal of 
beauty for twenty centuries, become ugly when ap- 
plied to our modern commercial uses, so obvious is 
their unfitness. Thus the Washington monument 
has pre-eminent fitness; its mass is justified in the 
name it commemorates; its form is exactly suited to 
the level plain upon which it is located. 
In our cemeteries, no regard whatever seems to 
have been had for Fitness; obelisks placed upon hill 
sides where the eye cannot fail to make them incline 
from the perpendicular; mausoleums of Grecian or- 
der squat upon level plains or even in valleys, 
where their lines become actually offensive; lofty 
shafts crowded together until the effect is that of 
factory chimneys; duplication and reduplication of ' 
forms in a “meaningless and damnable iteration.” 
When we see the Muse of History employing 
her stylus to engrave the name of a rich pork but- 
cher, it is only a more startling exemplification of 
the less obvious violations of Fitness which abound 
in our grounds. Mausoleums and vaults — whatever 
structure tends to withold the products of decom- 
position from the clean, sweet earth (nature’s univ- 
ersal disinfectant) are conspicuously unfit. Inter- 
ment (“in-earthment”) or cremation, civilization 
has a right to demand. 
Fitness is readily determined by the exercise of 
an enlightened common-sense. 
Hainnony of Outline. This is what the eye first 
recognizes in a structure, and no excellence of de- 
tail on closer inspection can overcome the repug- 
nance impressed upon the mind by a deficiency in 
it, and no fault in details can seriously mar the 
pleasure we find in the recognition of excellence in 
it. It is the most subtle and evasive of qualities — 
the achievement of it is a rapture, the recognition 
of it a delight. Consistency is nevermore a jewel 
than in the designing of a monument, and a good 
design was never produced when the designer had 
not a clearly defined idea in his mind of what he 
wished to accomplish. He must see the end from 
the very beginning. 
Fitness demands that the work should be in 
keeping with its surroundings. — Harmony of Out- 
line, that it should be consistent with itself — integ- 
ral — not a patchwork. 
Repose. It is the office of Memorial Art to 
soothe and tranquilize — not to startle or astonish. 
Unlike other departments of art, wherein even 
violent action may be admissible, here every line 
should be quiet — restful. 
Flamboyant details, tawdry decoration, feats of 
stone-cutting and engineering have no place in it. 
Repose excludes dynamics; and the moment our 
thought begins to wander from the contemplation 
of beauty to the admiration of mechanical or engi- 
neering skill, we know what we are looking upon is 
not an expression of true Memorial Art; its place is 
at the exhibition, not in the cemetery. 
Finally. An artisan can execute a design, but 
the design itself, if artistic, is the work of an artist, 
and we say again: You can do more than any one 
else to open the way for him; it is your duty to 
your clients, to your profession and to posterity, to 
do it. 
{To be concluded.) 
Westlawn Receiving Vault, Canton, O. 
The accompanying illustrations present the main 
features of the Westlawn Receiving Vault, built for 
the Canton Cemetery Association of Canton, Ohio, 
from plans by the architect, Mr. E. G. Essig, of 
Canton, Ohio. 
The vestibule is lO feet square with gothic arch 
