"To Ann Charman, died 1793, aged 54 years."
No one to whom I have shewn this sketch has given a satisfactory interpretation of it, but it will be allowed that the design is as graceful as it is uncommon. That it also in all likelihood refers to the Day of Judgment may perhaps be regarded as a natural supposition.
Even the open or half-open coffin, shewing the skeleton within, may possibly have some reference to the rising at the Last Day. We have this figure employed in a comparatively recent case at Fawkham in Kent, being one example of nineteenth-century sculpture.
FIG. 36.—AT FAWKHAM.
"Thomas Killick, died 1809, aged 1 month
1 day."
A crown is usually the emblem of Victory, but held in the hand, as in this instance, it indicates, I am told, an innocent life.
Other coffins displaying wholly or partly the corpse or skeleton within are perhaps not intended to convey any such pious or poetic thought as do the two foregoing, but simply to pourtray the ghastliness of death, a kind of imagery much fancied by the old stonemasons.
