The many handsome churches and public buildings add largely to the attractions of Charleston, and are, to a certain extent, a reflex of the minds of the people. As the descendants of old families concentrate their energies and their pride on their ancestral home, so the good Charlestonians from generation to generation have devoted theirs to the glorification of their beloved city; and in erecting new buildings, public companies as well as private individuals, instead of building according to their own special taste, have had some regard to that of their neighbours; every stone has been laid thoughtfully one upon the other, not only with regard to its own features, but as a part of a whole, and in perfect harmony with the general aspect of the city. One building never mars the effect of the other; the eye is hurt by no incongruity of architecture, no false colouring, but everywhere is a pleasant blending of symmetrical forms and delicate tints. The effect upon the eye is the same as that of a perfect melody upon the ear—no slurred notes, no flat where a sharp should be, nothing jarring, no false rhythm anywhere.
In secluded streets as well as in the public quarter of many a large city the eye is often struck with discords in bricks and mortar, marble, or stone; each structure perhaps tasteful enough in itself, but the effect being marred, and marring by contrast the work of its neighbour.
Fancy the effect of knee-breeches and a tall beaver on the Apollo Belvedere, a flat nose on “Antinous,” or a nez retroussé on the Venus of Milo!
The first question you are asked on entering a southern city is: “Have you been to the cemetery?”
This is one of the chief places of interest which everybody is anxious to point out; for next to the city of the living they cherish the city of their dead. It is here they come to while away their leisure hours, and bring the fresh flowers of every season to lay above the dust of their departed—for you seldom see an undecorated grave.
The Magnolia Cemetery is about three miles from the city; we pass first through a grand avenue to the German burial-ground, which is beautifully kept, with shining white walks winding among blooming flower beds and rare shrubberies, shaded by grand old oaks, clothed in their mantles of soft grey moss. Carved upon the headstones the solemn words “Her ruhet in Gott” meet the eye at every turn. Passing through this grave-garden, we soon come to the main entrance to Magnolia Cemetery; within the massive gates a colossal bell is suspended from a lofty scaffolding, which tolls slowly as the funeral approaches; a pretty Gothic chapel, where the services are held, stands to the left. Passing under the archway we come upon a few score of white wooden headstones, which stand like special guardians at the gates of death; beneath these lie the Federal dead. Farther on lies the wide Confederate burial-ground; here, side by side, and rank on rank, by hundreds—nay, by thousands—lie the soldiers of the lost cause sleeping their last sleep, happily unconscious of the ruin that fell on the land they loved before yet the grass grew over their graves. Few, very few, have an inscription to mark who rests beneath, but soft green hillocks swell in low waves on all sides of us; these hide the unknown dead, and over them are daisies and sweet wild flowers growing. Beyond these again lie the more fortunate, who have died at home, surrounded by friends and kindred, and fitly mourned in monuments of marble; there are symbolical urns and broken columns, groups of mourning friends in every possible or impossible attitudes of depression; there is a cherub blowing a trumpet as though striving to wake up the heavenly host with the news “another recruit is coming.” He is blowing so hard he seems to have blown himself out of his draperies, which are fluttering in the wind behind him, and weeping angels are drying their eyes with stony pocket-handkerchiefs, as though bemoaning that all the virtues of all the world lay perishing beneath them—at least, so says the inscription written there. As it always happens in the great cemeteries of north, south, east, and west, some of the departed are mourned in doggerel rhyme, some in ungrammatical prose. I think that many would rise up from their silent beds and wipe out these effusions if they could; but the dead have no remedy against the imbecilities of the living. One feels disposed to envy the unknown dead whose worth is chronicled and memory kept green in the hearts that loved them, with no marble monument to point the place where they lie “carved in dust.”
Passing through this silent world, we find ourselves in a wide white street which runs through the Catholic cemetery from east to west, in the centre and at the highest point of which stands a gigantic black cross. Cedar and ash and willow trees are growing in picturesque masses; green shrubberies refresh the sight, and rich red and cream roses are blooming everywhere. The grave gardens here are laid out in various shapes and sizes—square, circular, triangular, &c.—like a geometrical puzzle spread over the ground. The simplest grave has a cross above it, sometimes of wood, of iron, or of stone; the symbol of Christianity, as though growing out from the hearts of the sleepers, is lifted on all sides.
The sun is shining, the sweet air blowing, and a look of serene calm and most perfect peace is smiling everywhere. How the vexed and troubled folk, who wander here to get away from the busy, noisy world, must long to creep down under the roses and hide from this world’s noisy strife, and lie beside the sleeper under the sod, with hands crossed, eyes closed, at rest for ever more. Here is a grave covered with “forget-me-nots,” and a cry—a hard, cold cry—written in stone, craving to be “kept green in men’s memories;” as though the dead could hope to be remembered, when we who are living have to lift up our voices and struggle to the front that we may not be forgotten even while we live! Tall costly shafts of granite, wreathed with everlasting flowers, prick the skies, and elaborate architectural designs are erected here and there; one has brass cannon at the gates and sabres crossed upon the threshold, pointing the way the sleeper took to his death. After wandering about for some time we sit down to rest under a cedar tree, luxuriating in the sweet scent and bright colour of the waving flowerbeds, quite alone, as we thought, till a voice rather suggestive of “beer and skittles” came out of the silence:
“Nice weather, marm; things is sort o’ springin’ up everywheres, and some on ’em is full blowed, ain’t they?”
I look up; the owner of the voice has evidently just sidled round from the other side of the tree. He is an elderly man, with a ragged beard and patched clothing—the forlorn and decaying remnants of military glory; his face has a sodden, dissipated look, and his eyes a weak gin-and-watery appearance, anything but prepossessing. He was not exactly a nice kind of human ghoul to meet in such a solitary spot. I answered with an assenting smile or some kind of commonplace cheap civility, which evidently satisfied him, for he edged a little nearer, adding philosophically—