103 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
thought that there must be an essential want 
in our education, when the most devoted of 
parents, children, and friends, allow the re¬ 
mains of their relatives to pass from their 
pleasant homes on earth to such dreary and 
desolate habitations beneath it. Here some 
barbarous nations may shame us. 
Happily there may be traced a coincident 
change for the better in the school-house 
and the burial-place. While through the 
early influences of well beautified, well ven¬ 
tilated, and convenient school structures, 
opportunity is afforded for the refinement as 
well as health of our youth, there has been 
some progress from the barren “grave-yard” 
to the properly embellished cemetery. But 
this progress has been nearly all confined to 
the large cities. Thousands of villages in 
America have chosen their interment grounds 
almost solely with reference to first cost; 
scarcely with an eye to beauty of position, 
or with reference to protection. Generally, 
grounds have been chosen where water 
might escape, and where the sexton’s spade 
should not find too much impediment either 
by stone or clay. But how many have been 
set off from the corner of some treeless 
field, whose best day of farming fruition had 
passed, and whose owner could find no more 
profitable use to put it to! A day’s ride in 
almost any part of wealthy and cultivated 
New-England will usually show many cheer¬ 
less spots whose purpose is surely marked 
by broken, leaning, and prostrate stones ; by 
the twisted mats of decayed grass and briars; 
and by the cold, stately, and mocking monu¬ 
ments that ostentation raised to preserve 
that same caste in the population of the 
dead that the names to whose memory they 
were erected, strove to maintain in life. If 
you step over the stile, you will find as much 
incongruity as you are likely to find in the 
same space elsewhere. You will pass the 
stunted willows—almost the only tree-life in 
the spot, and they with scarcely vigor 
enough, even, to effectively weep. Have a 
careful eye to briars, and to the snakes with 
which your imagination at least will people 
a spot so congenial to their tastes. Look 
out, too, for the recumbent, half-visible slabs 
that in the first impulse of grief were made 
to tell such flattering tales. The virtues of 
the living for whom they«epeak, seem to have 
had their full posthumous reward in the flat¬ 
tering or warning lines of the graver’s chisel; 
for you see no further offering to their mem¬ 
ory— nothing else to show you that the 
ground below you holds something once val¬ 
uable. The mound of earth has sunk to the 
surface level or below it, and you will readily 
conjecture that no shrub nor flower had ever 
been planted there. Advancing, occasional¬ 
ly, a forlorn myrtle, stunted sweet-briar, or 
blush rose, will supplicantly peep out at you 
through the dead and matted grass and 
weeds, as if hopeful of relief. As your 
eyes will be entirely open for shade, you 
will not overlook the more pretending bal¬ 
sam fir, which has found its way into the lot 
—as stiff and ungenial as all the rest. Here 
a tall picket fence, mainly white, with red 
tops, carefully guarding and as happily hid¬ 
ing what it encloses ; then another, all black; 
then another, with white pickets and black 
tops. With little disposition too linger 
among associations so forbidding, you will 
gladly reach the opposite side from where 
you entered, and be grateful to find relief for 
your vision in the naked field beyond. 
In one of the oldest and wealthiest towns 
of Connecticut, and within a mile of each 
other, there are two very much such spots 
as I have described. One is the depositure 
of many generations, and was dedicated to 
the dead in a ruder and less cultivated age 
than the present; but the other has been in 
use a comparatively short time, and was pur¬ 
chased by wealthy people. The town has a 
larger average wealth to the individual than 
any community within my acquintance ;— 
scarcely any poor people, but full of the 
wealth of long years of rapid accumulation 
by the oldest inhabitants, and the superfluity 
of New-York retired merchants. The two 
miles square whose many well improved em¬ 
inences look out upon the waters of Long 
Island Sound, is almost all in the highest 
state of cultivation. Some of the best 
planted ornamental grounds and most elab¬ 
orate architectural specimens in the country 
here meet the eye in quick succession. But 
such neglect of the dead !—the tamest and 
least interesting spot, receiving the smallest 
possible attention—treeless, shiftless. The 
railroad and the steamer, that every day 
bear home the proprieters to their comfort 
and luxury, should also, when this life is de¬ 
parted, be t he medium to carry their remains 
to some rest less in contrast with the beau¬ 
ties they have enjoyed while living. 
The newer portions of the country have 
less reason to feel ashamed of their efforts 
in this matter than the older States, where 
everything but a wrong spirit in the people 
seems propitious for tasteful and fitting at¬ 
tention to the dead; but while the latter 
have better material in their more pictur¬ 
esque and varied surface, so frequently 
coursed by bright little streams, the former 
are showing the most spirit in the selection 
and subsequent care of their smaller ceme¬ 
teries. This should not be. All over the 
pleasant burial-places should show that the 
spirit that conceived and so elaborately car¬ 
ried out the idea of Greenwood, Mount Au¬ 
burn, and Laurel Hill, may be extended to 
the suburbs of all our villages, and be profit¬ 
ably appropriated by all thriving farming 
communities away from the towns—not the 
extravagance and childish display which so 
frequently mar the beauty of those ceme¬ 
teries, but the much that is refined and ap¬ 
propriate in them—the fine native trees so 
judiciously preserved; the natural effect of 
a variety of trees gracefully arranged ; and— 
what these noted spots have not had suffi¬ 
ciently in view—a monumental architecture 
less pretending, showing more feeling, and 
in better keeping with the spirit of the spot. 
May I suggest, without incurring the impu¬ 
tation of want of due respect, that black is a 
hideous accessory in cemeteries 1 There is 
enough to remind us of somber mortality with¬ 
out any such black and gloomy reminder as 
the iron inclosures that so frequently mark 
out individual rights. Where all is carefully 
guarded, there can be no use for such fences. 
Cheerfulness and warmth should be con- 
stanily in view ; their is no want of respect¬ 
ful dignity in either. Anybody but a misan¬ 
thrope would choose the living beauties of 
green trees and bright flowers to cheer the 
place of his rest. If any barrier may be 
used to mark lot-boundaries, it should be 
some plant of modest growth, or one easily 
controled by the use of the pruning-knife. 
Most hedge plants grow too large and rank, 
and unless cut very close, would soon alto¬ 
gether hide all modest plants within. Some¬ 
thing smaller—as the Burgundy rose, or the 
box—is more appropriate. 
The error of most private grounds—crowd¬ 
ed planting—extends to the cemetery. Va¬ 
riety of anything of the tree kind is quite out 
of the question in the usually small lots. 
When the spirit of tree-planting seizes one 
in the first genial days of spring, he is tempt¬ 
ed to anticipate time’s rapid progress by a 
very profuse use of trees; and where there- 
is scarcely room for one well developed tree, 
half a dozen or more uncongenial striplings 
gratify the planter’s present eye at a sacri¬ 
fice of all future good effect. Better prepare 
the ground well for one good tree, and make 
that show how much luxuriance and beauty 
may be attained. Almost any of the forest 
trees maybe used successfully in the ceme¬ 
tery. They should always be taken from 
open ground in the field, hedge-row, or 
nursery ; never from close woods. If the 
ground selected be so fortunate as to have 
thrifty second-growth young Hickories, it 
has what can not easily be got by trans¬ 
planting. If nature has favored it with but 
few specimens, they should be judiciously 
preserved; for there is no tree of equal 
beauty more difficult- to remove. But the 
same characteristic that produces the diffi¬ 
culty, is a marked virtue forcemetery adorn¬ 
ment which renders it valuable. Its long 
tap root, that finds its way into the earth, 
supplies, in the driest seasons, sufficient 
moisture to preserve an unfading foliage ; 
while the absence of lateral roots near the 
surface allows no obstruction to roots of 
grass. The smooth clipped turf may grow 
as thriftily next the body of the tree as away 
from it. No roots, either, to be molested by 
the sexton's spade. A beautiful effect may 
be produced by planting handsome vines, to 
climb the trunks of the trees. The climbing 
Roses, which have very greedy roots, would 
grow nearly as well by the side of a Hickory, 
if the ground was made rich, as in the open 
ground ; while if planted by the side of an 
Elm, it would find its long horizontal roots 
quite in the way. I do not speak of the 
Hickory to the exclusion of others, but 
only as a very common undomesticated tree, 
and too little valued as an ornamental shade. 
The greater variety of really good trees a 
cemetery can have, the better. The Elm is 
a more graceful as well as a more majestic 
tree. The peculiar green of the White Ash 
upon its well rounded head gives variety of 
foliage. The Oak family have an imposing 
and characteristic dignity ; and there is a 
long list of other good trees, each having its 
merit. There are the trees of the continual 
green ; and there are those, too, that, des¬ 
tined to part with it, assume the not less 
beautiful and appropriate hues in which ad¬ 
vancing autumn never fails to clothe them. 
There is a higher beauty, even, in the soft 
and richly blended, ever-varying tints of the 
later year, than in the more even verdure of 
June. Hence the merit of that large class 
of trees that so persistently defy the frosts. 
Those common trees, the Dogwood and the 
Sassafras, then have beauty enough to win 
that attention that their earlier modesty 
could not. The beautiful Virginia Creeper, 
which possesses among the vines this au¬ 
tumn glory in a marked degree, might be 
made to atone somewhat for the want of it in 
the suddenly denuded Hickory. 
As it is almost always desirable to select 
ground at least partially covered with natu¬ 
ral forest, a matter of next importance is a 
judicious selection of Grasses. In our own 
very prettily wooded cemetery, the result of 
much labor in seeding under the young 
second-growth trees has been discouraging, 
and only from ignorance of the fact that only 
a few domesticated Grasses thrive under 
trees. The more generally used are the 
least suitable—such as Timothy and Red 
Clover. Orchard Grass is far better. 
But I will not prolong what was only 
commenced as a reminder of the attention 
due to what should be a leading matter con¬ 
nected with horticultural improvement. For 
lack of the well beautified public grounds 
that every town should have, our cemeteries 
may be made delightful places of resort for 
all citizens who choose to pass a pleasant 
and quiet hour away from care and confine¬ 
ment. Almost every village may find some 
wild spot capable of ready adaption to such 
use. If swamp or rock does not make too 
large a portion, the wilder, the better. In 
cemeteries, as in private grounds, forest 
trees are quite the most effective and eco¬ 
nomical form of embellishment. 
