“Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,
L’espace d’un matin.”——
I remarked, also, the names of K. M. Smith, New York, Harriet Lewis, New London, Frances Morrison, Kentucky, Francina Wilder, and Mrs. Otis of Boston. A cypress is planted by the grave of Dr. Campbell of Tennessee, and some fresh garlands are hung upon its branches. Who is he who has won these pious attentions from the hands of strangers? I am now writing from the inkstand which once belonged to him, and which I will put with my relics. I am lodging in his room, and with the person who attended his fatal illness. She gave me his biography as follows: “He was always good, always polite, and every one loved him;” and then she burst into tears.
The last grave I looked upon, I will now read to you: “Died, March 1st, 1832, Frances Anne, Countess Colonna de Walewski, daughter of the late John Bulkeley, Esq., of Lisbon, widow of the late General Humphreys, of the United States, minister in Spain and Portugal.”—I could write a romance at the foot of this monument. I lingered here until the last glimmerings of day faded, and night covered all but the bleak and snowy marble. I then descended the hill, and with many a solemn reflection, reached my solitary lodge in the Faubourg St. Germain.
Let us reason awhile about the grave. The custom of locating grave yards in cities and towns, so universal in America, has been discontinued in nearly all these old countries of Europe. France has set the excellent example, which has been followed through the continent, and the large towns of England—London, Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and several others—and all the world acknowledges its necessity. Such a measure was not adopted here until the agency of burying grounds in corrupting the air and producing disease, was proved by numerous examples and experiments.
An account of these, contained in several hundred pages, was published by Maset, secretary to the Academy of Dijon, the one-twentieth part of which would fill with terror all those who live in dangerous contiguity with a city grave-yard. It is high time your towns in America should give this subject a serious attention. Your grave-yards are multiplying in number and extent prodigiously in the midst of communities which are likely, in a few years, to be numerously increased. Your Pottsville, which is about eight years old, has already six grave-yards, whose population nearly equals that of the village.
All those who die upon the railroads, mines, and canals, for twenty miles around, have themselves carried in and buried in town—as if to be convenient to market. A citizen of Pottsville does consent sometimes to reside in the country during his lifetime, but he does not think it genteel to pass his eternity out of town; and your miner soothes himself with the consolation that though he has many toils and perils in life, he will one day come out of the ground to be buried in Pottsville. It is in their infancy that such evils ought to be averted. They are more easily prevented than cured. And there are enough of other considerations besides health to urge the importance of the subject.
Every body knows the indecent irreverence and general inattention with which grave-yards are regarded in towns and cities. In many of them monuments are defaced and scribbled on, and the place even desecrated sometimes by the obscenity and brutal violation of visitors. To prevent this, they are often enclosed by high walls and rendered invisible. If the object were to forget one’s ancestors there could not be a better contrivance. It is worth while to squander away the best parts of a city to bring one’s deceased parents into oblivion or contempt! That this is the case cannot be denied. The citizen, the clergyman, the grave-digger, and the sexton, are all affected by the bones of their ancestors alike.
Who first brought this system of vampyrism into use? It was at least modern. At Babylon they buried the dead in the valley of ... look into your Bible; and the valley of Jehoshaphat, I believe, was out of town. The interment of the dead within the precincts of the city was prohibited at Rome by law. The Greeks had the same regulation, and forbade expressly that the temples of the gods should be profaned by the sepulture of the dead. The Achæans buried only one man in town, Aratus—look into your Plutarch. If they had governed our city councils they would have buried us all out of town, except “Benjamin Franklin, and Deborah his wife.” The first Christians followed the Pagans and Jews in this, and for a long time graves were not allowed to encroach upon the sanctuary of the church. But some pious and popular bishop having died in the course of time, I presume they buried him with his church, as they bury an Indian with his canoe; and then another and another, or perhaps some fat and lazy priest wished to have his dead family about him for the convenience of praying upon them. Who is going all the way to Père la Chaise? So he could just step out in his gown and slippers and dismiss the poor soul to purgatory, and then step back again to his soupe à la Julien. And then came avarice to sanction this convenience. We can heap generation upon generation and sell a church-yard over and over again to eternity.
Make me chief burgess of Pottsville, and I will provide a choice piece of ground overlooking the village, and apart from the living habitations—on a single plot, and with separate apartments for the several denominations; and this I will cultivate tastefully with trees and shrubbery, and lay it out with agreeable walks.
I will make the dead an ornament, instead of a nuisance and deformity to the living; and I will bind your erratic population to the soil, by the decency with which I will bury their fathers and mothers; and by improving the kindred affections, I will improve, at the same time, the moral and religious feelings of the community. I will carve out, from one of your rugged hills, a decent and solitary retreat, where we may sometimes escape from the business, the anxieties and frivolities of life, and where we may peruse the last sad page of our own history, upon the silent and solemn annals of the grave.