26 o 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
THS GRVND AVENUE OF PERE LACHAISE, PARIS, 
fr\n::h, with its monuments and char- 
acteristic FEATURES. 
No picture can give a more accurate idea of a 
French cemetery than this illustration of the prin- 
cipal avenue of the here Lachaise. As you see, it 
is a veritable city of the dead, with pavements, 
laid out avenues as you find them in Paris where 
much ground is left for squares. Do not think that 
beyond, where you see trees, the cemetery is laid 
out any differently. "Frees grow in the avenues, 
but ao avenues”are'wider, if as wide, as this one 
which from the principal entrance leads up to an 
elevation, and all the avenues are macadamized as 
chased. Ground is measured by the inch inside of 
the walls of Paris. 
It is evident that the law in almost every case 
is violated, but the law says that tombs should not 
be more than a meter high. In case of war, of a 
siege; government is not responsible for the de- 
struction of tombs more than a meter high. Dur- 
ing the Franco-Prussian war, great losses were sus- 
tained by individuals who had monuments at the 
Pere Lachaise, for bomb shells fell like rain in that 
part of the locality. Pere Lachaise lies on elevated 
ground. This cemetery suffered also with the com- 
mune. 
Under the chapels and tombs compartments are 
THE GRAND avenue, PERE EACHAISE, PARIS. 
we find them in Paris, in the city of the living. 
Among the peculiar architectural designs for 
cemeteries, the chapel is the most popular. On 
the left of the picture you see a whole row of them 
built on certain widths of ground. One reason for 
the regularity of French graveyards is that no one 
can purchase more than two concessions of lots. 
The large monuments are built on two concessions, 
“Une concession a perpetuite” means that the 
ground about a meter wide and one and a half long, 
belongs to purchaser for all time. In ordinary 
graveyards a concession costs $ioo. I do not think 
the cost is more in an important one like Pere La- 
chaise or Mont-martre; but all the desirable places 
are taken, and in some graveyards, those which can 
not be e.Rtended, concessions can no longer be pur- 
built for the remains of each member of the family 
In a double concession two compartments are built 
side by side. I think as many as five compartments 
may be built one on top of the other. 
Catholics prefer chapels to any other stj le of 
monument, for they are the most convenient for 
prayer. Catholics pray for the dead. In each 
chapel there is an altar ornamented like the altar of 
a church. There are steps in front on which to 
kneel, and also praying chairs. These interiors of 
chapels are generally visible from the outside 
through an iron grated door. 
It is the funeral gewgaws that spoil the appear- 
ance of a French graveyard quite as much as the 
regular planning of avenues, allies and lanes. The 
bead wreaths and those of yellow immortelles are 
