PARK AND CEMETERY. 
143 
GOD’S ACRE. 
We print the following article as an earnest plea 
for the expression of Christian feeling in mortuary 
art. An ostentatious disregard of that higher beauty 
that comes of the subordination of every part to the 
whole should have no place in a Christian cemetery. 
No one objects to elaboration and magnificence 
when the general effect of the surroundings has re- 
ceived proper consideration. In our park-like mod- 
ern cemeteries the beauty of the landscape should 
never be sacrificed to the eccentricity or the love of 
display of individuals, and while the erection of 
funerary monuments, both 
private and public, in the 
United States seems to be 
one of those many familiar 
customs which are experi- 
encing the modifying influ- 
ences of time, and the 
greater development of 
natural wealth and artistic 
knowledge, still the unrest 
and ingenuity which arc 
forever inciting man to seek 
new arrangements and ap- 
plications in his familiar 
methods are sometimes 
prompted by bad taste in- 
stead of good, so that all 
who have authority should 
be outspoken in condemn- 
ing bad work, while at the 
same time keeping every 
movement towards a proper 
commemoration of the be- 
loved dead, whether for the 
lowliest mound or stateliest 
mausoleum. In this coun- 
try, the practice seems to 
be increasing of doing away 
even with the heaped-up sod 
over the grave; the top is 
kept nearly on the general 
level, and frequently covered with a growth of 
myrtle that indicates the spot by its lustrous green. 
The ostentation which led the early Americans, 
the Indian tribes, to indicate the social rank of the 
deceased by the height of this mound has not been 
by the moderns, nor their customs of 
boxing the earth with grain seed as well as grass. 
It was not very long, however, among the Greeks 
before the rich began to add a monument of stone, 
the stele, a sepulchral slab or column, and this 
finally grew into the famous tomb of that king 
of Caira the Mausoleum, which by its beauty and 
importance gave its name to all subsequent sump- 
tuous tombs. The declaimants against luxury in all 
ages have found a favorite topic in this ostentation 
of mourning; and some modern religious sects, as the 
Society of Friends, or Quakers, limit strictly by 
formal regulation the height to which headstone or 
footstone shall rise, and the inscription thereon. 
In this country, it is only within the last few 
years that the individual has begun to give way to 
the custom of erecting family vaults. The former 
practice, however, with the sanction of immemor- 
ial usage in its favor will probably long endure; 
even the urns containing the ashes of the cremated 
body are generally buried 
in the earth. In our colder 
climates and with our more 
practical dispositions most 
of the superstitions and 
ceremonies connected with 
these last resting places 
have disappeared. At any 
time it would scarcely oc- 
cur to the Christian mourner 
to leave an opening leading 
from the outside door to 
the ear of the deceased 
through which he might 
hear the lamentations and 
the funeral chants of his 
friends, as if we may be- 
lieve M. Theophile Gau- 
tier is the custom in the 
cemetery of Constantinople. 
But the care bestowed upon 
the preservation of these 
grounds is common to both 
Christian and Turk; — the 
beauty of the burial places 
on the Bosphorus, with their 
tombs of marble of Mar- 
mora and the sombre cy- 
press trees, is striking. 
The unsightly enclos- 
ures in American cemeter- 
ies, of iron railings or of chains suspended from 
stone or iron posts, are gradually disappearing, the 
boundaries being now more generally indicated 
only by sunken posts of stone at the corners. That 
which may perhaps be defined as the progress of 
luxury or of refinement, led up to the introduction 
of the family vault, or mausoleum, — of greater or 
less size and importance — by the custom of erect- 
ing a shaft or other general monument in the cen- 
tre of the family enclosure. In the vault, frequently 
built into the side of a hill, the bodies are either 
interred or walled up in niches; the individual name 
is placed over each and the family name, promin- 
