centre of the grounds, has been set apart for a chapel, in the exercise of that excellent taste that has reigned throughout the whole disposition of the place. It only now remains for some of the many wealthy inhabitants of that ancient city to honor themselves by the erection of a suitable chapel, and thus raise a noble monument to their memories. Indeed, it is seldom that such an admirable opportunity for the exertion of a large and enlightened public spirit presents itself.*

The cemetery at Laurel Hill is situated about four miles from the city of Philadelphia, on the banks of the Schuylkill River. The part reserved, in perpetuity, as a place of interment, and secured as such by an act of incorporation, lies westwardly of the "Ridge Turnpike Road," and comprises about thirty-two acres. It is a place of many rural charms, and is furnished, in addition to the receiving tomb usual in such places, with a mansion, chapel, superintendent's cottage, green-house, gardener's and porter's lodges, and shrubbery. It is also ornamented with statues of "Old Mortality” and his pony, and of Sir Walter Scott, cut from a quarry in New Jersey by the celebrated Thom. The description of "Old Mortality" in the "Tales of my Landlord," is faithfully and felicitously realized in stone, and should furnish to all subsequent proprietors a hint to keep the place in perpetual repair.

The figure of Sir Walter is one of two full length statues of the great author extant in stone, and is pronounced by competent judges an excellent likeness." The cemetery was incorporated in 1836. The first interment took place in October, 1836, before the survey of the plot was finished, in consequence of a lady having requested that she might be buried under a particular clump of trees. In one respect, and that

A triangular lot has been reserved in a central part of the ground, where it has been proposed to erect a statue or monument to the memory of the honored and lamented BowDITCH. This is peculiarly proper, and when completed, as has been proposed, will be honorable alike to the dead and the living. It is right and becoming that the city where this distinguished man was born, where he passed the greater part of his life, where he received, or rather where he achieved for himself, his high mental and moral culture, where his affections always turned with the ardor of a first love, and to which he left valuable tokens of his regard at his decease, should possess a permanent monument like this. It would be worth a thousand times its cost in the gratification of a proper self-respect it would afford to his fellow-citizens generally; and who shall estimate its propitious influences upon the minds of those ingenuous youth, who, generation after generation, shall thus be permitted to see an enduring memorial of what unaided self-training, united with high moral worth, can accomplish?

a very important one, it possesses an advantage over Green Mount Cemetery and many others in this country and elsewhere. We refer to the fact that graves are used in preference to vaults or tombs. The whole enterprise is considered by its friends to be in successful progress, though it has been obliged, we regret to learn, to contend with old customs and antiquated notions, together with the religious prejudices of one or two sects, and more than all, with an original outlay of funds, more than double that expended on Mount Auburn.*

Green-Wood Cemetery is situated on the undulating high ground back of Gowannis Church, in Brooklyn, near the city of New York, two miles and a half from the South Ferry. "The surface of the ground is beautifully diversified with hill and valley, descending in some places to less than twenty feet above tide-water, and, in others, rising to more than two hundred. One position in particular, called by way of preeminence, Mount Washington, is two hundred and sixteen feet high, being the most elevated ground in King's County, and is one of the highest points on Long Island. A considerable portion of the ground is now covered with a fine old forest of native growth, the verdure and shade of which originally suggested the name of The Greenwood." The site of the cemetery comprises an area of two hundred acres. carriage avenues already opened and completed extend about three miles and a half in various directions, and have been staked out for the distance of twelve miles. The place has become one of frequent resort during the summer months, and this circumstance alone has done much to recommend it to public favor. Though the corporation have lost the immediate superintendence of its president, Major Douglas,† whose place, as a scientific and practical man, they may not hope easily to fill, yet there can be little doubt of the ultimate and entire success of the enterprise.

The

There are, as we have intimated, other very beautiful cemeteries of less note and importance scattered over the country, which we have not space to notice particularly. We have

* The cost of Laurel Hill Cemetery, up to the commencement of the present year, has been ninety-one thousand dollars. There were, at the same period, five hundred and fifty proprietors of lots, of different values, from fifty to many hundred dollars.

Removed to the Presidency of Kenyon College in Ohio.

briefly referred to the above for the purpose of showing that a better feeling has begun to prevail amongst us in regard to the burial of the dead. And from these facts we indulge the hope that a great public interest is henceforth to receive that care which it imperiously demands, and which will serve, in some measure, to do away that reproach, to which our neglect and indifference to it have, hitherto, justly subjected us. We would now add some suggestions on the appropriate rites and modes of burial. There seems to us to be quite as much need for improvement in these, as there was, until recently, in the places of sepulture.

And, first, the funeral service should, in our apprehension, be brief, and as private as the circumstances of the case will allow. The religious exercises should be condensed, comprehensive, and strictly in keeping with the person, place, and occasion. None but the immediate relatives and near friends, and those who really mourn, should be present at the service. The house of the mourners should be kept as quiet, as free from the intrusion of strangers as possible, for they need to be alone, who are attempting to gather up their religious resources, and reconcile their hearts, by degrees, to the now remediless blank that is left in the circle of their affections. Let it not become a sort of temporary bazar, where undertakers, and tailors, and mantua-makers, and milliners, et id genus omne, do congregate, to consult upon the last fashion that the "mockery of woe " has assumed. Let not the house, as we have before intimated, if funerals must be solemnized there, be disturbed in all its interior arrangements, to make room for a vacant crowd, who come as to an exciting spectacle. Let the funeral itself be simple, disfigured with no dark pomp and parade, no long procession of nodding plumes; and let the shocking mummery of hired mourners, whether bipeds or quadrupeds, be shunned as an abomination. In one word, let all things be done simply, fitly, quietly, reverently, and with an utter rejection of all idle show and empty pageantry.

In the next place, we must say, though we are aware that opinions differ on the subject, that the earth is the proper place for the remains of the dead, and not a tomb or vault above or beneath it. In other words, they should be interred or inhumed, not entombed. There is beauty in the thought of Cicero, that we thus commit them to the protection of a

mother.* "What can be happier," says Cyrus to his children, "than that my body should mingle with that earth, which is the common giver of all things good!" We sympathize entirely with Laertes in his direction respecting the remains of his sister Ophelia ;

ness.

"Lay her i' the earth;

And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."

Why should we wish to preserve the unsightly and necessarily offensive relics of our departed friends? We can scarcely picture to ourselves a more disgusting scene than that of a cadavery of any kind; that, for example, of the Capuchins near Palermo, which is the most famous in the world, where two thousand dead bodies are set up, habited in their accustomed dress, exhibits a wretched spectacle of diversified hideousAnd yet this is but a mitigated form of the horrid reality, as it must elsewhere exist, since desiccation here arrests decay. The corpse of Carlo Borromeo, which lies in a crypt in the cathedral of Milan, decked out, in all its ghastliness, with fine clothes and ornaments, is another specimen of this shocking mode of preservation. The Egyptians had some excuse for their extreme care in preserving the bodies of their dead, in their peculiar notions of Metempsychosis, thinking that they might thus retard the departure of the soul on its long series of transmigrations, or keep its pristine body ready for its reception on its return. The Romans cut off a finger from the corpse, partly, as is supposed, that they might have something that once made a portion of the deceased, in the practice of their parentations, or renewed funeral rites at the burial-place of their friends. But why men of this day, who have not the poor excuse of such superstitions to plead, should wish to preserve, or even render accessible, the decayed and debased and unsightly fragments of what were once their friends, is to us inconceivable. Could we, even by a word, arrest that process of decay, by which the elementary

*"Redditur enim terræ corpus, et ita locatum ac situm, quasi operimento matris obducitur." De Legibus, Lib. ii. It was also an ancient saying, "Terra es, terram geris, terram teris, in terram converteris." Lucretius says of the earth,

"Omniparens, eadem rerum est commune sepulchrum." Xenophon. Cyrop. Lib. viii. c. 5.

principles of our bodies, loosened from the control of the mysterious principle of life, are allowed to obey their natural affinities, and hasten to dissolution, we would not utter it. Could our departed friends speak to us, would they desire such a disgusting preservation as this? No. When the spirit has gone to God who gave it, let "dust go down to dust, earth to earth, ashes to ashes,' "—and no matter how soon. Only let it be in a spot in harmony with the recollections of our friends, as they were, and were to us, when living. Let it be in retirement, away from the noise and bustle of towns and streets, and all the garish show of life. Let it be under the open sky and in the free air. Let it be amidst the "inexpressible beauty of trees" and shrubs. Let it be among the harmonies, and beauties, and sublimities of rural nature. Let it be set apart and enclosed, as our living homes are, from vulgar intrusion. Let it be adorned with the appropriate tributes of taste and feeling, and the spot, the spot, is memorial enough for us. The ghastly and loathsome image of what was once beautiful and lovely, would only serve to interrupt the trains of thought which we most wish to cherish when we think of those who were once here.

But there are other and obvious objections to tombs or vaults, besides those of taste and sentiment. They They are necessarily insecure and comparatively temporary in their duration. We only distantly allude to those offensive results that must attend their dissolution. It is impossible, that, after a series of years, they should not, in the sure process of decay, that waits on the most elaborate structures of human skill, reveal what has been committed to their charge; and those who have visited Père la Chaise, which has not yet an antiquity of a half a century, will understand what we mean by these remarks. Indeed we need not go so far for an illustration of our meaning. Already have numbers been

*With what just taste and manly feeling does Propertius express himself on this subject! And how remarkable are the lines, too, when viewed in contrast with the all but universal practice of his age! They are almost beautiful enough to induce us to read his other poems, - even though they be his love elegies.

"Di faciant, mea ne terrâ locet ossa frequenti,
Quâ facit assiduo tramite vulgus iter.
Post mortem tumuli sic infamantur amantûm.
Me tegat arboreâ devia terra comâ.

Aut humet ignotæ cumulus vallatus arene.
Non juvat in mediâ nomen habere viâ.”