VIRO.

REVERENDO.

TIMOTHEO. ALDEN.

A. M.

PASTORI.

HUMILI. AC. FIDELI:

ECCLESIÆ. CHRISTI. QUÆ. EST.

APUD.

YARMOUTH.

MASSACHUSETTENSIUM.

ANNUM.

ÆTATIS.OCTOGESIMUM. AGENTI

TOMUM.

QUINTUM. OPERIS. HUJUSCE.

NECNON.

SUMMA. CUM. OBSERVANTIA.

DEDICAT.

FILIUS. NATU. MAXIMUS.

TIMOTHEUS. ALDEN.

A COLLECTION OF AMERICAN EPI. TAPHS AND INSCRIPTIONS, WITH OCCASIONAL NOTES, BY REV. TIMOTHY ALDEN.

RICHMOND, VIRG.

852. In memory of the awful calamity, that, by the providence of God, fell on this city, on the night of the 26 of December, in the year of Christ, 1811; when, by the sudden and dreadful conflagration of the RICHMOND THEATRE, many citizens, of different ages, and of both sexes, distinguished for talents and for virtues, respected and beloyed, perished in the flames; and, in one short moment, publick joy and private happiness were changed into universal lamentation ; this monument is erected; and the adjoining church dedicated to the worship of almighty God, that, in all future times, the remembrance of this mournful event, on the spot where it happened, and where the remains of the sufferers are deposited in one urn, may be united with acts of penitence and devotion.

Note.-Seldom has it fallen to the lot of the his torian, in any age of the world, to record a calamity at once so sudden, so unexpected, so awful, so distressing, as that, the remembrance of which the foregoing inscription is designed to perpetuate. The annals of America have never furnished its parallel.

On thursday night, 26 December, 1811, it appears that the Theatre, on Shockoe hill in Richmond, was attended by an unusual number of people. The pantomine, entitled Agnes and Raymond, or the Bleeding Nun, was to have closed the amusements of the evening. This had been translated for the occasion by mr. Girardin; and many, who had seldom repaired to this place of recreation, now attended in order to witness its performance, principally, through civility to their fellow citizen. In the first act of this afterpiece one of the scenes exhibited the cottage of a robber, which was illuminated by a chandelier. When the curtain fell, on the close of the first act, and before it rose for the second, this chandelier was raised aloft among the oil-painted scenery. By a fatal inattention, the lamp was not extinguished! The fire instantly caught, spread with rapidity, and in less, than five minutes, the whole roof, as well as the suspended combustible materials, was in a blaze. "It burst through the bull's eye in front; it sought the windows where the rarefied vapour sought its passage, fed by the vast column of air in the hollows of the theatre, fed by the inflammable pannels and pillars of the boxes, by the dome of the pit, by the canvass ceil.