344 
PARK AND CE/nETCRY 
The Cemetery as a Work of Art.* 
An American poet once said that be wished his body to be 
cremated and his ashes scattered from a lofty height of the Sier- 
ras so that the wind might carry his dust into the crannies of the 
mountains and become a part of their substance. 
Those everlasting hills w'ere the monument he craved, to be 
absorbed by them the honor he desired. 
Probably but few paid any attention to his words, and per- 
haps they attributed them to the idiosyncraey of a disordered 
mind. But, was it not a poetic, unselfish and legitimate ambi- 
tion? 
Great and sane men crave the distinction of burial within 
the w'alls of Westminster. To be buried there is the highest 
honor England has to offer her illustrious dead; and though the 
record of such interment is but a brief inscription graven on a 
stone in the floor, the assurance of such recognition would be 
sweet balm to the departing spirit of many a celebrated English- 
man. Now, if it is good to be buried in a building grand in it- 
self, grand in the historic memories that cluster around it, and 
grand in the famous names recorded above the impalpable 
powder of past generations, why is it not better to be absorbed 
by a sublime mountain? 
The building, it is true, is a living work of art in that it 
breathes the spirit of the artist who designed it, but it is subject 
to deterioration by the action of the elements and is only kept 
intact by the constant care of man. At best its span of existence 
is short. 
But a mountain is a living thing, a part of old Mother 
Earth. It is subject to the yearly cycle of changing seasons 
its summit ever kisses the skies, while around it storm clouds roll 
or mists are folded, or its snowy peak stands clear cut against 
blue ether. 
It is more than mere earth, mineral and stone. I hold that 
there is greater opportunity for the untrammeled dust scattered 
broadcast on the Pacific Slope than for that packed selfishly 
away in the crypt of a mighty building. There is a chance for 
it to be used repeatedly as all of nature’s materials are intended 
to be, so that, having been transmuted into a noble Redwood or 
a sturdy Pine, the dross may be so nearly eliminated that a final 
appearance, perhaps as a delicate Edelweiss on the brink of a 
glacier, will fit the purified atom for translation to some fairer 
sphere whose coarsest dust corresponds to the most refined that 
this world knows. But, if any object to being sown broadcast, 
( and probably some will), why not try and rouse in them the 
ambition to be buried in a work of Art more perfect than West- 
minster Abbey and as beautiful as the Sierras? 
Are there not in this day indications of a faint stirring in 
the hearts of men of the feeling that it is better to be laid to rest 
in a peaceful place such as living men long for when weary, 
rather than in an artificial desert of stones. The tired body and 
brain turns instinctively for rest and refreshment to the simple 
beauty of natural landscape. Grandeur and sublimity are in 
themselves overpowering and for that reason lack the solace and 
restful ness of woods, lakes, and streams. The quiet, shaded 
glen; “the violet by the mossy stone”; the singing brook or rip- 
pling lakelet; the soft twitter of wild birds; the drowsy hum of 
insects; «//phasis of sylvan simplicity appeal to the ebbing vital 
force of man. 
Is not this a token, may it not be a silent guide, especially 
an encouragement to the members of the Association I have the 
honor to address, to continue their efforts to raise the standard of 
public opinion as to what constitutes fitting homes for the dead? 
Let us think so, and let them continue to strive to make noble 
works of art, artfully artificial places of peaceful rest, quiet 
’'Paper read at the St. Louis Convention of the Association of Ameri- 
can Cemetery Superintendents. September, 1896. By Mrs. Fanny Cop- 
ley Seavey. 
resorts for weary wanderers, pleasant last homes for the dust of 
humanity, so that the living need no longer banish their dead to 
the conventional, lugubrious stone yards that they themselves 
enter with regret and leave with relief. And let them be made 
along the line indicated by the natural instincts of mankind so 
that each shall be a perfect landscape of its kind whether pastor- 
al or picturesque as fits the spirit of the natural landscape it re- 
places or becomes a part of. Humboldt calls landscape garden- 
ing “composing landscapes,” which clearly shows the close re- 
lationship between this art and that of landscape painting. And 
it is true that the fundamental rules of the two are identical, 
and the chief of these is unity. 
It is said of the master landscape painter, Corot, that what 
he wanted to express in painting was “not nature’s statistics, 
but their sum total; not her minutiae, but the results she had 
wrought with them; not the elements with which she had built 
up, (note the expression), had built up a landscape, but the land- 
scape itself " — that is a certain broad effect — and that he “creat- 
ed landscapes out of the elements which in nature’s presence he 
had stored in his sketch book and in his memory. He but com- 
pleted the beautiful messages she had been suggesting here and 
half revealing there.” 
The landscape gardener also composes and builds up land- 
scapes and the artists among them do so from nature’s own sug- 
gestions by carefully working out and combining hints that they 
have noted in woodland rambles, from fleeting glimpses of 
natural beauty gamed from the window of a railway train, from 
careful study of masses of foliage, from analytical examination 
of shadow effects, from all the data that his artistic eye has 
gleaned and that he has stored in his note book and his memory, 
reinforced in this day by photography. 
True, he must be hand in glove with the elements that 
compose his picture for they correspond to the painters pig- 
ments, they are his medium of expression, and it goes without 
saying that he must have perfect control of them before he can 
express anything; just as we must have a vocabulary before we 
can make our ideas understood. But, on the other hand, he 
must have something in mind that he intends to express, a beau- 
tiful effect in nature that he wishes to set before the world, or his 
materials are useless; just as one may know lots of words, but 
having no idea to present, they avail nothing. 
So, the landscape gardener strives to express some one of 
natures phases, and to secure it he knows how to subordinate 
detail to the broad general effect. He never loses sight of the 
basic truth that the whole is greater than any of its parts. In a 
word he studies analytically, but he treats his work syntheti- 
cally. 
To apply these rules to cemetery work ought not to be 
difficult. 
First, as Downing said, “let not the individual consider only 
what he wishes to do in his folly, but study the larger part that 
nature has done in her wisdom, viz; do not strive to unmake the 
character she has stamped on a piece of ground.” This may be 
taken to apply more especially to the surface of the ground. 
Then, as to planting he further emphasizes the same truth by 
saying explicitly “that true art in landscape gardening selects 
from the natural materials abounding in any location its best 
sylvan features, and by giving them a better opportunity than 
they could otherwise obtain brings about a higher beauty of de- 
velopment and a more perfect expression than nature herself 
offers.” But the sort of man we have in mind does not forget, 
as Prof. Goldwin Smith once accused some one of doing, 
that he is only the Editor and not the Author of Nature. 
But the matter is, unfortunately, less simple than it seems 
because Cemetery esthetics are seriously handicapped by time 
honored customs old enough and bad enough to be set aside as 
obsolete; by preconceived notions; and by man’s vanity and sel- 
