144 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
ently, either on the outside of the structure or in 
the interior. 
The modern tendency is toward fullness of in- 
scription, as well on the individual grave as on the 
general monument, — the name spelled out in full, 
the dates of birth and death, month as well as year 
given. 
It is needless to say that the rhyming and other- 
wise grotesque epitaphs which have furnished such 
irreverent entertainment to posterity, are no longer 
common. In Paris 
and other European 
cities all inscriptions 
on tombs have to be 
submitted for ap- 
proval to the civic 
authorities. 
Something more 
even than the usual 
exceeding care 
which may be 
brought to the exe- 
cution of any endur- 
ing work of art 
seems to be required 
in the execution of 
the simplest of these 
funerary m o n u - 
ments, whether 
headstone, shaft or 
mausoleum. Ihe 
common errors in 
taste or design, the 
ignorant blending 
ol architectural 
styles, the abuse of 
cheap statuary, even 
the poor workman- 
ship in the stone- 
cutting, allseem pe- 
culiarly inexcusable 
in these silent 
grounds. It should 
not be considered 
enough to appropri- 
ate the general idea 
of a polished shaft, a Celtic cross, a Greek tomb- 
stone, a Roman or Pyzantine vault and entrust its 
execution to indifferent designers and workmen, — 
the best technical skill and the most refined feeling 
can nowhere be more fitly employed. The beauty of 
careful and intelligent stone-cutting of artistic design 
only is just beginning to be properly appreciated 
among us, and the workman who thus maintains the 
dignity of an ancient art against the cheap and the 
machine made should be worthily encouraged. We 
may not set up the tombs of our ancestors along 
the public highways, as did the Ancient Romans, 
with the object, as Varr® reports, both of recalling 
to the passerby the fact of his mortality and of en- 
couraging him in his journey, by leading him on in- 
sensibly from the contemplation of one fine monu- 
ment to another, the mausoleum of our illustrious 
dead may not out-rival those of Hadrian and Au- 
gusta; but the best work of our ecclesiastical de- 
signers, sculptors and stone-cutters should certainly 
be employed; we 
should be content 
with nothing less. 
In many of the 
important Ameri- 
can burial grounds, 
rural and urban, 
there may already 
be seen interesting 
examples of intelli- 
gent design. The 
artist, architect, the 
sculptor, the worker 
in stone have all in- 
dividually or col- 
lectively, striven 
with varying success 
producing work 
worthy to be used 
to signify our rever- 
ence for the dead 
and our hope of im- 
mortality. A due 
restraining of archi- 
tectural eccentrici- 
ties in the more im- 
portant tombs and 
mausoleums has 
gone hand in hand 
with a growing dis- 
favor for the con- 
ventional angel or 
figure o f Hope, 
Faith or other ap- 
propriate V i r't u e, 
which are following 
into oblivion the little woolly lamb, the cherub, 
and other devices that formerly adorned our 
grave-stones. The practice of introducing re- 
cumbent portrait statues is, as yet not so common 
as in Europe; in the best examples of these the 
mediaeval symbolism and a certain discreet realism 
takes its place. The necessity of discreetness in this 
posthumous realism is made evident by such im- 
portant misconceptions of the true spirit of funerary 
art as may be seen in the work of even the best 
Designed by W. & G. Audsley, Anhitects. 
THE “liRADFORD” CROSS, ROCK CREEK CEMETERY, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
