357 PARK AND CEMETFRY. 
The Evolution of the Modern Cemetery Memorial. 
Two causes, differing widely from each other, seem 
conspiring- to bring about a radical change in the ar- 
rangement and decoration of our cemeteries, both of 
them working slowly but inevitably — the gradual 
A TYPICAL GERMAN FAMILY MONUMENT OF SAND- 
STONE IN A BERLIN CEMETERY. 
change for the better in matters of taste, even in the 
smallest communities, and the growing practice of cre- 
mation. The former is already noticeable ; one of the 
most frec|uent of the minor duties to which practising 
landscape gardeners and artist-architects are now 
called is the replanning and refurnishing of the family 
lot in the rural cemetery. It is not that the grounds 
have been neglected, the graves sunken or overgrown 
with weeds, but that the architecture of the vault or 
mausoleum, the style of the central monument or 
shaft, the general ordering and sentiment, so to speak, 
of the enclosure, recall the earlier period when our 
fathers bought their pictures from Diisseldorf and their 
marble statues from Italy. Indeed, it is not thirty 
vears since a very important branch of the business of 
the marble importers was represented by these car- 
goes of funeral statuary, the conventional figures of 
Faith pointing upward and Hope with her anchor, the 
decorous draped angels with wings, the broken column, 
and even the fat little cherubs and the woolly little 
lambs. These statues, conventional and common- 
place as they were, were much better than any that 
could have been secured for the same price at home. 
They were not, generally, extravagant or affected, nor 
unduly conducive to ridicule, and were always marked 
by something of that technical ability for which the 
Italian marble cutters have long been famous. But, 
fortunately, today they are disappearing and being 
gradually replaced by simpler forms and a more dig- 
nified taste — as they, in their time, signified the change 
from the carved cherubs’ heads and pillows of the 
rural stone cutter, the grotesque or rhyming epitaphs, 
of a still earlier period. The sculptor and the archi- 
tect today find their recompense in other marble work 
which, in combination with the better landscape gar- 
dening, the use of somewhat more costly materials, 
the introduction of new and dignified ornament, as the 
Celtic cross, and the much freer use of color, in stone- 
work, in bronze and mosaic, may be hoped to bring 
these resting places more fully in consonance with 
“that ancient Saxon phrase, God’s Acre.” The very 
restraint and severity of style imposed by this art acts 
as an incentive to the truly capable designer. The use 
of the human figure is by no means forbidden, and the 
successful combination of his stone and metal work 
with the living green of the landscape, the light and 
shade of the open air, the enveloping atmosphere of 
solemnity and chastened sorrow, felt even by the casual 
visitor, all may furnish the noblest inspiration. 
It is of course impossible to give to our American 
cemeteries that intimate character, partly familiar and 
partly reverential, which characterizes those of the 
older nations of the world. The United States coun- 
tryman, unlike the peasant, has no imagination — of all 
that wealth of tradition and fantasy, of folk-lore and 
folk song, which fills the life of the tiller of the soil 
elsewhere, savage, barbarous, half-civilized and enlight- 
ened, he has not one glimpse. The utmost stretch of 
his imagination enables him only to occasionally sug- 
gest “a ghost” in the churchyard. Consequently he is 
far from investing these resting places with any great- 
degree of interest, awesome or otherwise, or from 
A GERMAN CANOPY MONUMENT. 
using them as familiar resorts on stated occasions — 
either as the half irreverent mediaeval gatherings of the 
populace in the cemeteries when the locality sacred to 
the Caniard, the Death’s Head, lent a zest to their 
