custom of depositing the dead body in the ground, which seems to us the most agreeable to nature and the least liable to objection of any mode of disposing of the dead which has ever been adopted. We naturally speak of the earth as our common mother; she furnishes materials for our living organization; she feeds and clothes us by her bounty; her beauties delight our eyes; flowers from her bosom refresh us by their fragrance, and we naturally feel for her more than a mere poetic affection. And what can be more accordant with the native sentiments of the heart, than the desire that when we have done with life we may lie down in her bosom to rest? "What can be happier," says Cyrus to his children, "than that my body should mingle with that earth which is the common giver of all good things?" This was the language of a heathen, and we may therefore say of nature, while the language of Scripture, "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," suggests the propriety that the earth, out of which our bodies are formed, should receive them when they are no longer the habitation of the living spirit.

Our natural attachment to the earth as a place of rest for our inortal remains, may have been greatly diminished if not entirely destroyed by artificial means; and yet even in such cases, the voice of nature will sometimes make itself heard. Who that has ever seen or ever read of the lifeless body consigned, with a startling plunge, to the bottom of the ocean, or heard the tales of horror which came up from the battle-fields, or the deep, dark forest, where birds and beasts of prey fatten on human flesh, but has felt a strong revulsion of nature, and the desirableness of being permitted to lie quiet and undisturbed, and, if possible, beside kindred dust, beneath the clods of one's native earth?

In contrasting a common grave with a tomb, a simple excavation in the ground with a habitation reared above it or sunk below its surface, with the means of opening and entering, we might assign as one reason of our prefer

* We believe that the trustees of Mount Auburn, some years since, prohibited, except under certain circumstances, the erection of tombs in this most magnificent of American cemeteries. We think the example a good one, and indicative of good taste, and hope it will be followed by those who have the care of other "cities of the dead."

+ Xenophon, Cyrop. Lib. viii, chap. 5.

ence, the danger which may attend the opening of a tomb and breathing the air which it has long confined. But we choose rather to restrict our remarks to other objections. And the great objection, aside from taste and simplicity, which we feel, is, that as a tomb above ground becomes old and dilapidated, it is not only extremely unsightly to behold, but may expose the sacred remains which it was intended to conceal; but even if it is below the surface, it can hardly be secure, even for a single generation, against liability to need attention to keep it in a becoming condition. But aside from this, which, taking years into view, we regard as a very grave objection to tombs, who would not find it more pleasant to think of the body of a friend securely laid to rest in the bosom of the simple earth, where, when the coffin decays, the dust of the body shall mingle unseen with the dust of the ground, than to think of the same body deposited in a chamber prepared for it, where, when its wooden enclosure has decayed, the mortal dust shall be exposed; or if the coffin be of some imperishable substance, prevented from uniting with its kindred particles and being lost to human view in that for which it has a natural and appointed affinity? "By interment," says Frederick Schlegel, we restore to the earth what was originally derived from it, and entrust to her motherly bosom the earthly body, as a seed sown for futurity. And if, as the Scriptures plainly indicate, the natural body is the seed from which a spiritual, body is to arise, how much more accordant with the idea of such a germination, that the dust of the body shall lie enclosed in the warm embrace of the simple earth from which it was originally taken." But we leave this subject to be viewed by our readers as their own reflections shall direct them. We are aware that the question is not one to be decided by argument, so much as by taste and sentiment; and having expressed our views freely, we have no wish to dictate a decision. We cannot, however, withhold the opinion that the practice of simple burial in the ground will ultimately, and probably at no distant day, supplant all other modes of disposing of the relics of the dead.

As to inscriptions upon monuments reared over the graves of departed friends, while both propriety and affection suggests that they should not be wholly omitted, good

VOL. XIII.-NO. XLIX.

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taste demands that they should be short, significant and unpretending. Neither the common grave-stone, nor the more expensive column or structure, is an appropriate place for extravagant eulogy, or a detail of every virtue which adorned the dreamless sleeper. It is a place for the simple record of the time, and, it may be, of the circumstances of his departure, and perhaps of a passing word of affection for the dead, or of admonition to the living. A sentiment expressed as if it came from the lips of the departed, is sometimes happily appropriate; and not unfrequently, a short, well-chosen passage of Scripture is, of all inscriptions, the most becoming and impressive.

Perhaps there is no one thing more likely to mar the beauty of the many cemeteries now in existence or yet to be established, than a desire for singularity, and for a display of expense, in monuments and monumental inscriptions. There is in all matters a great diversity of taste; and it were not well for the beauty and charm of life to have this diversity destroyed. We are made to love variety; all nature is full of it; and in its endless beauty true taste finds much of its gratification. But there is often a taste for singularity, a desire for something unlike every thing of the kind which the thought of man has ever before devised; an attempt to be original, when it would be much better taste, because much more natural, to bring our views nearer to the common standard. And we think that where fancy has so much to do as in the choice of the form and finish of a monument for the dead, there is great danger that simplicity, nature, and unchangeable propriety, will be sacrificed to a desire to be original, striking, or more than usually appropriate. But there is perhaps greater danger to the real beauty of our cemeteries, from the great and growing love of expense which marks our country, if not our age, in almost all matters upon which money can stamp its image. With many, the cost of a thing determines at once its superiority or inferiority, whether it be a thing to be made better or no better by the expense bestowed upon it. And this love and pride of expense men may carry with them when they are directing monuments for the dead, to the utter violation of that simplicity which should characterize all such memorials. We do not mean that either the larger monument or the more humble headstone, should be parsimoniously cheap, as though the liv

ing grudged the dead this means of making known to coming generations the place where they lie; but we mean to say that they should never be made to display the superior wealth either of the dead, or of the friends who erect them to their memory. Let there be variety, chastened, however, by the associations of the place; and let no pains be spared for any thing which can speak appropriate and impressive sentiments to him who stops to read; but let all be simple, natural, unostentatious, and in harmony with the great idea that death is a mighty leveller, destroying, by his simple touch, all the fancied elevation which riches, titles, or any thing but simple, genuine goodness can give to men on earth. If wealth will seek display, if gold must tell of its place and its possessor in costly and enduring monuments, let them not stand in places of the dead, except it be as a people's tribute in honor of great and heroic deeds to one's country, or some distinguished service to the human race. And even in these cases, the cenotaph were perhaps to be preferred to any monument placed over the dust of the honored dead, or containing their mortal remains..

Few thoughts are more humiliating to the pride of man, as he stands forth in the strength and vigor of life, than that, after all that can be done by material monuments to perpetuate our own, or the names of departed friends, time bids defiance to our efforts, and will erase the most enduring inscription. "There is no antidote," enduring_inscription. says Sir Thomas Brown, "to the opium of time;" and in vain do we seek to transmit our names to distant posterity by any material structure over the place of our mortal remains. The solid stone, whose hardness almost sports with the sculptor's chisel, cannot resist the action of the elements, but must yield to the all-corroding touch of years. In the language of the author of Hydrotaphia, "grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years,"—and, to speak with more caution, a single century works sad ruin in most sepulchral monuments. "In vain," continues the above named quaint and original author, "do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the sun." And how true is this of all the ordinary means by which ambition seeks to live in future generations. But there is an immortality which the poor as well as the rich may obtain. It is the immor

tality of goodness, of noble, Christian deeds-deeds great, if not in the sight of men, yet in the sight of God-and ever secure of honor from him who will cause the name of the righteous to be in everlasting remembrance. Here is indeed a memorial over which time has no power; and to earn it during life, is an object worthy of man's highest powers, and most diligent endeavors. "Who," says Sir Thomas Brown, again, "can but pity the founder of the Pyramids?" And who, we may add, can but honor and admire those heroic deeds of virtue and religion, which stand along the highway of ages, telling to every passing generation, of those who, amid much difficulty and conscious weakness, achieved them by a rigid and persevering adherence to duty? Such memorials can never pass

away.

It were wrong in the present connection, not to acknowledge our obligations to Christianity, not only for the light which it throws upon the future world, but also for the peaceful and hallowed associations with which it invests the grave. To those without a divine revelation, the place of the dead has always been a place of gloom; and whatever may have been done by outward decoration to relieve its deep dreariness, still the thought of it was never pleasant. The house of the dead is to a heathen mind a house of desolation. But Christianity dispels its cold and cheerless horrors. It makes it a place of calm and serene repose, a house of expectation, where mortal relics await a promised immortality. The idea of death, so full in itself of dreariness and terror, is in Scripture, and particularly in the New Testament, softened down into the grateful and peaceful idea of sleep. All the good, every believer in the Son of God, when he closes his eyes. to this world, sinks into a sweet and temporary repose, from which the divine promise stands pledged that he shall one day awake to put on immortal bloom and vigor. And it was this idea of death as a sleep, that gave the name of CEMETERIES (zouao, to sleep,) to the buryingplaces of the early Christians. The word itself, means a dormitory or sleeping-place; and in the language of Bingham, was used in this connection, "because the bodies were not supposed to be properly dead, but only laid to sleep till the resurrection should awaken them."*

Antiquities of the Christian Church, book xxiii, chap. 1.