Fanciful monuments and inscriptions, then,
are objectionable; as are also all obelisks, urns,
narrow upright pedestals, small models of church
spires, Corinthian columns, complete or broken,
and everything of the sarcophagus kind. Of
upright monuments, crosses alone are good, and
these should be low, and not too large. It is
in the very nature of things, alas! that the
ground of graveyards should be continually
disturbed. A monumental stone is no sooner set
up than it becomes necessary, perhaps, to make
a new grave close beside that which the stone
marks, and so its foundations are disturbed, and
the monument settles over to one side. Nay,
changes may take place in connexion with the
ground beneath the tombstone itself, and the
same result may then follow. And this settling
over to one side, having always something of a
ludicrous appearance, is a thing to be guarded
against in every way, and does seem to suggest,
upon the whole, that the best churchyard
monuments are flat ones, and such as extend in a
horizontal position along the ground.

A better kind of gravestone is beginning to
appear in our cemeteries, and to it the old
objectionable forms are gradually giving place.
Among the newer monuments which are to
be seen in our modern burying-places, the
reader who cares to observe such things, will
take note that there is one which is very
simple and good, and which common sense,
as well as good taste, recommends. A plain
slab of stone or marble, about the size of the
grave, lying above it in a horizontal position,
and surrounded by a gilded railing. It is not
unfrequently the case that between the slab and
the railing there is sufficient room left for a
flower-bed, and the whole combination forms
probably as good an out-door monumental
structure as could be hit upon, and one, moreover,
within reach of the means of a great
number of people.

This is a kind of monument which is both
simple and natural, and but little liable to be
displaced or to fall out of repair. When it is
seen among the others, which have been glanced
at above, it at once proclaims its superiority.
Obedient to the force of gravitation it is in
unison with the laws of nature, instead of
opposing them, and, raised but little from the earth,
it fears no fall. When the flowers are in bloom
all around the central slab, or the evergreens
when flowers may not be had, the whole
thing presents a cheerful look such as should
rightly characterise a monument set up by those
who sorrow, but with hope. Such memorial
stones as these, with the bright gilt railing, the
pure marble slab, and the flower-beds, are
amenable to no charge of horror or ghastliness.

A cemetery is most certainly the right place
for a profusion of flowers. Of all out-door
monumental decoration these are by far the
most beautiful and appropriate. Those who
have money to spend upon the last habitation
of their friends and relations, and who piously
desire to show their love and sorrow by some
sort of outward sign, will act more wisely in
paying some annual fee to the cemetery gardener
to keep churchyard flower-beds trim and
pretty, than in laying out a vast amount of
money among stonemasons, resulting in
executed angels, or trophies of cannon-balls and
swords and cocked-hats, and other such insignia,
hinting at the professional career of the
deceased. The sums of money spent on these
great ponderous symbolical monuments are often
very large. But who that has groaned in
presence of some hideous specimen of sepulchral
bad taste, some terrible combination of cherubs
and skeletons, of scythes and hour-glasses, of
broken columns and ponderous marble clouds,
and who has at the same time felt the beauty
of one of these flower-begirt graves, will not
testify to the superiority of the gardener's work
over that of the stonemason?

There is, too, a symbolism in the
introduction of flowers here which makes them
specially fit. These plants have come up from
a root which itself was buried in the earth in
order that the flower which we admire might
bloom. They were put into the ground in the
form of seed or bulb with no beauty about them
to win our admiration, but they come up in due
time arrayed in such splendour of decoration as
cannot fail to fill us with admiration first, and
then, as we think longer, with hope. They are
grasses of the field whose perishable nature have
been made before now to typify the insecurity
of human life. Moreover, they suggest, at least,
a certain continued supervision, a daily tending
and care which favour the idea that those to
whose memory they are sacred, are still held in
recollection by their friends.

Let our "gardens of the dead," then, be really
gardens in the ordinary acceptation of the word.
It is terrible, at best, that act of hiding away in
the grave the bodies of those we have loved,
remembering that the very lips which we have
kissed, and the hands which we have held in ours,
are lying there in the cold wet earth, when the
days are dark and the nights are stormy. A
grievous thought always, and one to which man's
nature may not altogether be reconciled. But
let us do all that lies with us to make this thought
more endurable, and divest the place where those
whom we have cared for are laid, and where we
must one day lie ourselves, of all that is ghastly
and repulsive externally—of everything that can
strengthen that natural fear of death which is
strong within us always.

FAR AT SEA.
I.

"AH!" I says, "you've been a hard and a
bitter mother to me; and yet it goes again the
grit to turn one's back upon you. I've toiled
on, and lived hard, and yet you've always
showed me a cold, cruel face;" and as I said
that, feeling quite heartsick, I leans my elbows
on the side o' the ship, and my chin on my
hands, and has a long, long look at the old
country as we was leaving—perhaps to see
no more.

I looked round, and there stood plenty, tearful-eyed
and sad with all the lines of sorrow marked