I have a large carved seat of Sicilian marble, another of “dove” marble, and three others of carved stone, and no one of them was acquired by me in a complete state. Why should not a man or woman who has some training in art and who has seen the best architectural things in the world be able to design something that will be equal to the best in a stonemason's yard, I should like to know?
And then, what about the pleasure of working out such details—the pleasure and the profit of it? Surely they count for something in this life of ours.
Before I forsake the fascinating topic of stonework, I should like to make a suggestion which I trust will commend itself to some of my readers. It is that of hanging appropriate texts on the walls of a garden. I have not attempted anything like this myself, but I shall certainly do it some day. Garden texts exist in abundance, and to have one carved upon a simple block of stone and inserted in a wall would, I think, add greatly to the interest of the garden. I have seen a couple of such inscriptions in a garden near Florence, and I fancy that in the Lake District of England the custom found favour, or Wordsworth would not have written so many as he did for his friends. The “lettering”—the technical name for inscriptions—would run into money if a poet paid by piece-work were employed; unless he were as considerate as the one who did some beautiful tombstone poems and thought that,—
“Beneath this stone repose the bones, together with the
corp,
Of one who ere Death cut him down was Thomas Andrew
Thorpe,”
was good; and so it was; but as the widow was not disposed to spend so much as the “lettering” would cost, he reduced his verse to:—
Beneath this stone there lies the corp
Of Mr. Thomas Andrew Thorpe.”