CHURCH-YARD WANDERINGS. "Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs." SHAKSPEARE. SOBER subjects, Mr. Editor, but yet of universal concernment, and on that account, perhaps, adapted for a magazine. What individual gazes upon the most obscure cemetery without feeling the uncertain tenure of human existence-without a thought respecting the time when" dusty death" shall number him with those that lie low !-the period when the warm tide of life shall cease to career through his veins, and the glories of nature no more expand themselves before his delighted vision! Even the callous-hearted sexton, who sings at grave-digging, and with whom "custom hath made it a matter of easiness" he who tosses about the jowls of many who were his potcompanions forty years ago, in the days of his youth; this white-haired, hard-featured man is sometimes visited while at his vocation with an unbidden thought, as to who the trusty brother of the trade may be that will do for him what he has done for thousands." The soldier, apprenticed to carnage, has also felt forebodings of his own doom steal across his mind, however careless he may appear on the subject ;-in short, who has not? For my own part, I am fond of communing with the dead they have the start of me a little while; are more advanced in knowledge than the living; and if they had the gift of utterance, would, probably, testify to me how little knowledge is, after all, really worth. There are times when their speaking silence communicates unutterable feelings to the heart-feelings that flow back to the very sources of existence, prompting strange thoughts and imaginings. Though in the full flush of health and manhood, I can find pleasure in visiting the last abodes of mortality, and in conning over the " hoary text," that "teaches the rustic moralist to die." The habitations of the dead, though forsaken by the world in general, are not wholly so I am accustomed to visit them often, and to regard them as the dwellings of friends with whom I must soon abide. I have a great admiration for beautiful church-yards, and a fastidious taste in choosing situations for sepulchres; oftentimes setting at nought certain ceremonies of consecration, and other common-place essentials to the quiet repose of the defunct in the view of mother church. My taste for a place of sepulture is like his who exclaims→→ : "Mine be the breezy hill that skirts the down; Fast by a brook, or fountain's murmuring wave, And many an evening sun shine sweetly on my grave." or the wild and picturesque grave-ground of Ossian, even more congenial than that of the "Minstrel" to one of my disposition-“A rock with its head of heath; three aged pines bend from its base; green is the narrow plain at its feet; there the flower of the mountain grows and shakes its white head in the breeze. The thistle is there alone shedding its aged beard. Two stones half sunk in the ground shew their heads of moss." The mouldy vaults of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's may be occupied for me in all their "night and desolation," until they are themselves entombed in the ruins of their superstructures, leave me undisturbed but a few feet of ground on such a spot as is described above. I have no freehold of my own that will answer my views for a burial-place, nor shall I be able to spare 500l. from my family, like Lord Camelford, to be buried on the shores of the Leman or the banks of the Arno. I am, therefore, fond of visiting the church-yards in the vicinity of the metropolis, in one of which I may by and by "set up my everlasting rest;" for I wish to repose out of the authority of city churchwardens, who would speedily retake the little space I might occupy in their smoky domains to accommodate a new tenant, and gather a fresh fee by scattering my half-decayed members to the winds. In London, where I see "Much that I love, and more that I admire, And all that I abhor" in London, people are more regardless and negligent of their places of interment than in any other great city of the civilized world. With reason and philosophy, strictly speaking, the feeling of respect for a lifeless body amounts to little; it is but ashes and dust. Still there are associations connected with the resting-places of the dead, pleasing melancholy associations, ranking with those sensations that fling the richest colouring over our existence, and are too amiable and virtuous to perish. It seems a sort of sacrilege to treat the dead with disrespect, and regard them as sources of profit. Purse-pride, sordid purse-pride is the presiding deity in this vast city. Here it literally nods in sable plumes, 66 Adorns our hearse, and flatters on our tombs." From the Lord Mayor to the sexton-from the Gog and Magog of the Guildhall to the remotest corner of the charnel-house, where mortality is corrupting and the fungus springs loathsome from the festering carcase-it pervades, directs, and governs. Can they have time to consider the dead, who are absorbed in trafficking with the living, in overreaching each other, calculating profit and loss, and worshipping Mammon with soul-destroying idolatry? Hence death has become a source of public and private revenue, as well as every thing besides ; and relatives, too often friends, undertakers, attorneys, sextons, and the government, share in the spoils of the destroyer. The poor man in his decease and interment exhibits the same picture every where; and the few tears shed for him who had no means of purchasing them, may be safely pronounced genuine. The noble is conveyed to the mausoleum of his ancestors with indifference; for the mimic mourning which attends him may be bought in every street, and the heir is already exulting in the possessions of the individual to whom, perhaps, he owes his being. But the decease of the majority of substantial people, as they are called, or persons of some property, is in London, more than in other places, linked with long-cherished hopes dependant upon the event. Scarcely is life extinct, when dutiful friends and relatives hasten to satisfy the cravings of curiosity, and realize the thirst of profit. The group assembles near the chamber of death, in which some solitary individual may now and then be found with anguish at the heart's core, while the rest only keep up a decent solemnity to sanctify appearances. The officious attorney, who, in these days, woe. viper-like, worms himself into the most secret recesses of families, opens and reads the will with a grave and important air. A visible grief begins to shew itself in the legatees, in proportion to the accomplishment of their pecuniary expectations. Those who are disappointed look sullen, and soon steal off. The undertakers and their hirelings, the gouls of a christian land, are ordered to make an ostentatious display, which may save trouble by shewing in open day the sorrow of surviving friends, the virtues of the deceased, and, above all, the wealth he has left behind him. Plumes are multiplied on plumes, and escutcheon upon escutcheon, and mourners hired to "bear about the mockery of To some obscure and dingy spot, partly surrounded by dwellings, or walls easy of access to the resurrection-men, (who do their best, like carrion-flies, to remove the causes of fœtid exhalations,) the body is conveyed in theatrical state-feathers, tinsel, and gold leaf, waving and glittering among the sables. In the mean time the sexton issues orders to his deputies; for he himself is not the "Goodman Delver" of Shakspeare, bearing the image and superscription of his art about him, but a man of importance in his parish; he points out the spot where the strata of coffins is supposed to be most decayed. Their actual state is ascertained by an iron rod, which is thrust into the earth as a grocer uses a "cheesetaster." There, deep or shallow, in proportion to the decay of the former possessors, the employés dig the grave. The procession arrives at the same moment with half a dozen others, and the minister consigns them to the soil, with a hurried repetition of the authorized service. If the executors omit to place a hic jacet over the body, it rests for a year, or perhaps two, till the progress of decomposition, which is said to be rapid in the plethoric corses of well-fed citizens, allows it to be turned up to make room for one who was once a next-door neighbour. Such are the ceremonies of a London interment. Who would not declare for an undisturbed rest on "the breezy hill that skirts the down," or on " the rock with its head of heath?" Fortunately, in this climate the summer heat rarely endures long enough to concoct fevers from the putrid exhalations of crowded bury. ing-grounds. A lady of strong good sense and high family, who died some years ago, desired that her remains might be burned and her ashes placed in her tomb, as an example to lead the way in this salutary reform. Her monument recording her motives for so acting, may be seen in the burying-ground of St. George's, Hanover-square. Nothing but a legislative enactment, forced by some horrible evidence of its effects, will change the present mode of burying almost in the houses of a crowded city. The dread of iron coffins, lately exhibited by certain parish officials, is easily accounted for-they keep corruption close, and retard the exhumation of the bodies for fresh interments; thus, by using them generally, a means of supporting an extra-parochial dinner now and then would be lost, and larger and more decent receptacles for the dead must be provided. We therefore despair of seeing extensive cemeteries formed at a distance from its crowded dwellings until a plague has once more devastated the capital.† Beings supposed in Eastern romance to feed on dead.corpses. + The burying-place of the Innocents in Paris was, like those of London, situated in the midst of a crowded neighbourhood. Fevers broke out around it, and were In the vicinity of London there are several cemeteries kept in decent order, and far different from the ruinous-looking repulsive enclosures within the precincts of its labyrinth of buildings in which "black melancholy dwells ;" the melancholy of horror, and not of chastened and saddened recollection; but even these shew that the dead are indeed soon forgotten. No hands are observed in them suspending garlands on the tombstones, or plucking obtrusive weeds from the graves. They remain unstrewed with symbols of affection, and no" rosemary" is offered "for remembrance" there. The sod is pressed, indeed, by the footstep of the passenger whose path to business or pleasure lies over it, but visits of regard to the tombs of the departed, very common in some parts of England, are unknown. There is such a change of men and things constantly passing before the eyes of the living; there is so much care and such a number of those collisions which blunt the more exquisite sensibilities of our natures always harrassing us, that the early indifference manifested towards the dead in the memory of survivors, is easily accounted for. The flowery feelings of life are fading away fast before the withering influences of money-getting and corruption. In the country the loss of a friend inflicts a wound which it will take years to heal; in town, friends are easily replaced, because town friendships do not make part of ourselves-the things of the heart, which those in the country in some measure do. The sight of the churchtower, beneath which a beloved relative or friend reposes there, brings before us a regretful remembrance of him; but in London we have no passing mementos of the dead, for the living absorb all our faculties, and the soil that sounds hollow on the coffin too often buries the memory of town friendships with the body it covers. It may seem harsh thus to accuse a civilized people of neglecting the dead, when their memory is preserved in some countries with a religious veneration, and when even unenlightened nations exhibit an affectionate regard for them. The morais of the South Sea Islanders, and the observations lately made by our countrymen among the amiable people of the Loo Choo Islands, prove this. The American savage never forgets the tomb of his fathers. In his trackless woods he scoops out the pit in which he inters the body; and though drawn by war or hunting hundreds of miles distant, though years may have elapsed and age paralyzed his limbs, he can even then direct the inquirer to the spot again, and can recal with filial respect the number of moons which have passed away since he committed the parental reliques to the earth; he remembers too the exact height of the sun that marked observed to be very fatal during the hot months of summer. In 1780, the soil had arisen eight feet above the height of the neighbouring streets. Vaults stuffed full with corrupting bodies; pits, in which the dead were piled in layers on each other; and fresh graves daily opening in the midst of putrefaction, easily explained the causes of the disorders which raged in their vicinity; and the council of state, in spite of the resistance made to it for a long time by the church, issued an order in 1786 to abate the nuisance. The remains of human beings, equal in number to the population of the city, were removed to the stone quarries situated under Paris, and the site of the cemetery was changed into a market. Masses of human flesh were found converted into spermaceti, from the want of the necessary air to complete the process of decay. Four large cemeteries, one of them 80 acres, were allotted at a distance from the city, where the air cannot stagnate, to inter the dead. * For an account of one of these, see Vol. iv. p. 155, New Monthly Magazine. 66 the hour of interment. The Parguinotes, so basely sacrificed to their enemies the Turks, with a fine romantic feeling of regard for the bones of their fathers, collected them in heaps in their market-place, and burned them, that they might not be thought to have abandoned them to the detestable barbarians, who were licensed to rob them of their native soil. This was an act worthy of Grecian hearts when Greece was in her glory. Thus a respect for the dead is a natural feeling born with us, and matured with our being. The regard of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans for their dead, and the stupendous, but vain evidences time has spared of their respect for them, are known to all conversant with antiquities. But of modern burying-places the Turkish are those which most impress the mind with the solemnity of the last change. Black cypresses form a grove around every tomb, which is never disturbed, and consequently the cemetery increases in size, with every fresh interment, until it covers a whole horizon. Grave upon grave, with the plantations thus multiplied, present a sad and gloomy appearance; the tops of the cypresses undulate in the wind for leagues, like waves on a dark ocean of death. White marble here and there contrasts with the deep dense shades of the sombre foliage, and the whole scene is stamped with a most impressive and melancholy grandeur. In the south of Spain the cemeteries afford a direct contrast of character to those of Turkey. "During the time I sojourned in Spain," says L. M. de Langle, "I found in various towns and villages the most charming burying-grounds, in regard to the situation and rural aspect they presented. On the road from Granada to Cadiz, in a little town of Antiquera, one struck me beyond all the rest; and though I only saw it once passing, I have its exact picture imprinted on my memory. It was in the centre of the town, and the church was situated near the middle of it. It stood on high ground, was a perfect square, and commanded a clear view all round: a streamlet ran sparkling through the centre, the soil was covered with jessamines, violets, roses, and numberless other flowers, that sprung up spontaneously without culture. There were no cypresses, sycamores, or other tress of sorrow, with their bastard-green colour, nurturing melancholy beneath their boughs, and seeming devoted to the service of death; but there were plenty of lote-trees and apple-trees, on which a thousand birds were singing and making love among the branches." In the uncultivated and wild parts of America, the grave of a settler or backwoodsman is excavated in the midst of a boundless forest, beneath trees that have flourished for unknown ages, and in a spot, perhaps, never before visited by a human intruder. The grave is dug deep to prevent wild beasts from disinterring the body. There it is inhumed "unhouselled" without dirge or prayer, and, being covered with earth, is resigned for ever amid the solemnity of those mighty solitudes to its unbroken repose. The cemetery of Napoleon is a singular instance of adaptation to the character of the individual buried-a vast rock rising out of the occan, alone, towering, unshaken and magnificent; a perfect emblem of the genius of the man, as it must appear in future history. When the feminine apprehension of, or hatred to his ashes, that fortunately consigned them to such an appropriate grave, instead of bringing them to Europe, has subsided, and his virtues and vices are duly weighed unwarped by modern prejudices, his name connected with his |