CHAPTER XXI
ELEGIAC MEMORIALS IN EDINBURGH
One denotement, among many, of a genial change, a relaxation of the old ecclesiastical austerity long prevalent in Scotland, is perceptible in the lighter character of her modern sepulchral monuments. In the old churchyard of St. Michael, at Dumfries, the burial-place of Burns, there is a hideous, dismal mass of misshapen, weather-beaten masonry, the mere aspect of which, before any of its gruesome inscriptions are read, is a rebuke to hope and an alarm to despair. Thus the religionists of old tried to make death terrible. Much of this same order of abhorrent architecture, the ponderous exponent of immitigable woe, may be found in the old Grayfriars churchyard in Edinburgh, and in that of the Canongate. But the pilgrim to the Dean cemetery and the Warriston, both comparatively modern, and beautifully situated at different points on the north side of the Water of Leith, finds them adorned with every grace that can hallow the repose of the dead, or soothe the grief, or mitigate the fear, or soften the bitter resentment of the living. Hope, and not despair, is the spirit of the new epoch in religion, and it is hope not merely for a sect but for all mankind.
The mere physical loveliness of those cemeteries may well tempt you to explore them, but no one will neglect them who cares for the storied associations of the past. Walking in the Dean, on an afternoon half-cloudy and half-bright, when the large trees that guard its western limit and all the masses of foliage in the dark ravine of the Leith were softly rustling in the balmy summer wind, while overhead and far around the solemn cawing of the rooks mingled sleepily with the twitter of the sparrows, I thought, as I paced the sunlit aisles, that Nature could nowhere show a scene of sweeter peace. In this gentle solitude has been laid to its everlasting rest all that could die of some of the greatest leaders of thought in modern Scotland. It was no common experience to muse beside the tomb of Francis Jeffrey, the once formidable Lord Jeffrey of The Edinburgh Review. He lies buried near the great wall on the west side of the Dean cemetery, with his wife beside him. A flat, oblong stone tomb, imposed upon a large stone pedestal and overshadowed with tall trees, marks the place, on one side of which is written that once-famous and dreaded name, now spoken with indifference or not spoken at all: "Francis Jeffrey. Born Oct. 23, 1773. Died Jan. 25, 1850." On the end of the tomb is a medallion portrait of Jeffrey, in bronze. It is a profile, and it shows a symmetrical head, a handsome face, severe, refined, frigid, and altogether it is the denotement of a personality remarkable for the faculty of taste and the instinct of decorum, though not for creative power. Close by Lord Jeffrey, a little to the south, are buried Sir Archibald Alison, the historian of Europe, and Henry Cockburn, the great jurist. Combe, the philosopher, rests near the south front of the wall that bisects this cemetery from east to west. Not far from the memorials of these famous persons is a shaft of honour to Lieutenant John Irving, who was one of the companions of Sir John Franklin, and who perished amid the Polar ice in King William's Land, in 1848-49.
In another part of the ground a tall cross commemorates David Scott, the painter [1806-1849], presenting a superb effigy of his head, in one of the most animated pieces of bronze that have copied human life. Against the eastern wall, on the terrace overlooking the ravine and the rapid Water of Leith, stands the tombstone of John Blackwood, "Editor of Blackwood's Magazine for thirty-three years: Died at Strathtyrum, 29th Oct. 1879. Age 60." This inscription, cut upon a broad white marble, with scroll-work at the base, and set against the wall, is surmounted with a coat of arms, in gray stone, bearing the motto, "Per vias rectas." Many other eminent names may be read in this garden of death; but most interesting of all, and those that most of all I sought, are the names of Wilson and Aytoun. Those worthies were buried close together, almost in the centre of the cemetery. The grave of the great "Christopher North" is marked by a simple shaft of Aberdeen granite, beneath a tree, and it bears only this inscription: "John Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy. Born 18th of May, 1785. Died 3d April, 1854." Far more elaborate is the white marble monument,—a square tomb, with carvings of recessed Gothic windows on its sides, supporting a tall cross,—erected to the memory of Aytoun and of his wife, who was Wilson's daughter. The inscriptions tell their sufficient story: "Jane Emily Wilson, beloved wife of William Edmonstoune Aytoun. Obiit 15 April, 1859." "Here is laid to rest William Edmonstoune Aytoun, D.C.L., Oxon., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in the University of Edinburgh. Sheriff of Orkney and Zetland. Born at Edinburgh, 21st June, 1813. Died at Blackhills, Elgin, 4th August, 1865. 'Waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.' 1 Cor. i. 7." So they sleep, the poets, wits, and scholars that were once so bright in genius, so gay in spirit, so splendid in achievement, so vigorous in affluent and brilliant life! It is the old story, and it teaches the old moral.
Warriston, not more beautiful than Dean, is perhaps more beautiful in situation; certainly it commands a more beautiful prospect. The traveller will visit Warriston for the sake of Alexander Smith,—remembering the Life Drama, the City Poems, Edwin of Deira, Alfred Hagart's Household, and A Summer in Skye. The poet lies in the northeast corner of the ground, at the foot of a large Iona cross, which is bowered by a chestnut-tree. Above him the green sod is like a carpet of satin. The cross is thickly carved with laurel, thistle, and holly, and it bears upon its front the face of the poet, in bronze, and the harp that betokens his art. It is a bearded face, having small, refined features, a slightly pouted, sensitive mouth, and being indicative more of nervous sensibility than of rugged strength. The inscription gives simply his name and dates: "Alexander Smith, Poet and Essayist. Born at Kilmarnock, 31st December, 1829. Died at Wardie, 5th January, 1867. Erected by some of his personal Friends." Standing by his grave, at the foot of this cross, you can gaze straight away southward to Arthur's Seat, and behold the whole line of imperial Edinburgh at a glance, from the Calton Hill to the Castle. It is such a spot as he would have chosen for his sepulchre,—face to face with the city that he dearly loved. Near him on the east wall appears a large slab of Aberdeen granite, to mark the grave of still another Scottish worthy, "James Ballantine, Poet. Born 11th June, 1808. Died 18th Dec., 1877." And midway along the slope of the northern terrace, a little eastward of the chapel, under a freestone monument bearing the butterfly that is Nature's symbol of immortality, you will see the grave of "Sir James Young Simpson, Bart., M.D., D.C.L. Born 1811. Died 1870." And if you are weary of thinking about the evanescence of the poets, you can reflect that there was no exemption from the common lot even for one of the greatest physical benefactors of the human race.
