"To John Clark, died 1793, aged 62 years;
and Rebecca his wife, died 1794, aged 61
years."
The inscription adds:
"What manner of persons these were the last
day will discover."
Gravestone plagiarism of this sort is very common, and there is to be found at West Ham, Essex, the same symbolical flight of the angel and child repeated as many as five times.
The pilfering is not so weak and lamentable when the copyist appropriates merely the idea and works it out in a new fashion. The term new can hardly be attributed to the notion of a plucked flower as a type of death, but it occurs in so many varieties as almost to redeem its conventionality.
The sculptor of a stone which is in Dartford burial-ground probably had the suggestion from a predecessor.