MANY are the idle tourists who have babbled of country churchyards many are the able pens which have been employed on the same subjects. One in particular, in the delightful olio of the "Sketch-book," has traced a picture so true to nature, so beautifully simple and pathetic, that succeeding essayists might well despair of success in attempting similar descriptions, were not the theme, in fact, inexhaustible, a source of endless variety, a volume of instructive records, whereof those marked with least incident are yet replete with interest for that human being who stands alone amongst the quiet graves, musing on the mystery of his own existence, and on the past and present state of those poor relics of mortality which everywhere surround him mouldering beneath his feet-mingling with the common soil-feeding the rank churchyard vegetation-once sentient like himself with vigorous life, subject to all the tumultuous passions that agitate his own heart, pregnant with a thousand busy schemes, elevated and depressed by alternate hopes and fears -liable, in a word, to all the pains, the pleasures, and "the ills, that flesh is heir to."

The leisurely traveller arriving at a country inn, with the intention of tarrying a day, an hour, or a yet shorter period, in the town or village, generally finds time to saunter towards the church, and even to loiter about its surrounding graves, as if his nature (solitary in the midst of the living crowd) claimed affinity, and sought communion, with the populous dust

beneath his feet.

Such, at least, are the feelings with which I have often lingered in the churchyard of a strange place, and about the church itself to which, indeed, in all places, and in all countries, the heart of the Christian pilgrim feels itself attracted as towards his very home, for there at least, though alone amongst a strange people, he is no stranger: It is his father's house.

I am not sure that I heartily approve the custom, rare in this country, but frequent in many others—of planting flowers and flowering shrubs about

the graves. I am quite sure that I hate all the sentimental mummery with which the far-famed burying-place of the Pere Elysée is garnished out. It is faithfully in keeping with Parisian taste, and perfectly in unison with French feeling; but I should wonder at the profound sympathy with which numbers of my own countrymen expatiate on that pleasure-ground of Death, if it were still possible to feel surprise at any instance of degenerate taste and perverted feeling in our travelled islanders-if it were not, too, the vulgarest thing in the world to wonder at anything.

The custom, so general in Switzerland, and so common in our own principality of Wales, of strewing flowers over the graves of departed friends, either on the anniversaries of their deaths, or on other memorable days, is touching and beautiful. Those frail blossoms scattered over the green sod, in their morning freshness, but for a little space retain their balmy odours, and their glowing tints, till the sun goes down, and the breeze of evening sighs over them, and the dews of night fall on their pale beauty, and the withered and fading wreath becomes a yet more appropriate tribute to the silent dust beneath. But rose-trees in full bloom, and tall staring lilies, and flaunting lilacs, and pert priggish spirafrutexes, are, methinks, ill in harmony with that holiness of perfect repose, which should pervade the last resting-place of mortality. Even in our own unsentimental England, I have seen two or three of these flower-plot graves. One in particular, I remember, had been planned and planted by a young disconsolate widow, to the memory of her deceased partner. The tomb itself was a common square erec◄ tion of freestone, covered over with a slab of black marble, on which, under the name, age, &c., of the defunct, was engraven an elaborate epitaph, commemorating his many virtues, and pathetically intimating that, at no distant period, the vacant space remaining on the same marble would receive the name of "his inconsolable Eugenia." The tomb was hedged about by a basket-work of honeysuckles. A Per

sian lilac drooped over its foot, and at the head, (substituted for the elegant cypress, coy denizen of our ungenial clime,) a young poplar perked up its pyramidical form. Divers other shrubs and flowering plants completed the ring-fence, plentifully interspersed with "the fragrant weed, the Frenchman's darling," whose perfume, when I visited the spot, was wafted over the whole churchyard. It was then the full flush of summer. The garden had been planted but a month; but the lady had tended, and propped, and watered those gay strangers, with her own delicate hands, ever more in the dusk of evening returning to her tender task, so that they had taken their removal kindly, and grew and flourished as carelessly round that cold marble, and in that field of graves, as they had done heretofore in their own sheltered nursery.

A year afterwards-a year almost to a day-I stood once more on that same spot, in the same month-"the leafy month of June." But it was leafless there. The young poplar still stood sentinel in its former station, but dry, withered, and sticky, like an old broom at the mast-head of a vessel on sail. The parson's cow, and his halfscore fatting wethers, had violated the sacred enclosure, and trodden down its flowery basket-work into the very soil. The plants and shrubs were nibbled down to miserable stumps, and from the sole survivor, the poor straggling lilac, a fat old waddling ewe had just cropped the last sickly flower-branch, and stood staring at me with a pathetic vacancy of countenance, the halfmunched consecrated blossom dangling from her sacrilegious jaws. "And is it even so?" I half-articulated, with a sudden thrill of irrepressible emotion. "Poor widowed mourner! lovely Eugenia! Art thou already re-united to the object of thy faithful affection? And so lately! Not yet on that awaiting space on the cold marble have they inscribed thy gentle name. And those fragile memorials! were there none to tend them for thy sake?" Such was my sentimental apostrophe; and the unwonted impulse so far incited me, that I actually pelted away the sheep from that last resting-place of faithful love, and reared against its side the trailing branches of the neglected lilac. Well satisfied with myself for the perforinance of this pious act, I turned

from the spot in a mood of calm pleasing melancholy, that, by degrees, (while I yet lingered about the churchyard,) resolved itself into a train of poetic reverie, and I was already far advanced in a sort of elegiac tribute to the memory of that fair being, whose tender nature had sunk under the stroke "that reft her mutual heart," when the horrid interruption of a loud shrill whistle startled me from my poetic vision, cruelly disarranging the beautiful combinationof high-wrought, tender, pathetic feelings, which were flowing naturally into verse, as from the very fount of Helicon. Lifting my eyes towards the vulgar cause of this vulgar disturbance, the cow-boy (for it was he "who whistled as he went, for want of thought") nodded to me his rustic apology for a bow, and passed on towards the very tomb I had just quitted, near which his milky charge, the old brindled cow, still munched on, avaricious of the last mouthful. If the clown's obstreperous mirth had before broken in on my mood of inspiration, its last delicate glow was utterly dispelled by the uncouth vociferation, and rude expletives, with which he proceeded to dislodge the persevering animal from her rich pasture-ground. Insensible alike to his remonstrances, his threats, or his tender persuasion— to his "Whoy! whoy! old girl! Whoy, Blossom! whoy, my lady !—I say, come up, do; come up, ye plaguey baste!" Blossom continued to munch and ruminate with the most imperturbable calmness-backing and sideling away, however, as her pursuer made nearer advances, and ever and anon looking up at him with most provoking assurance, as if to calculate how many tufts she might venture to pull before he got fairly within reach of her. And so, retrograding and manoeuvring, she at last intrenched herself behind the identical tombstone beside which I had stood so lately in solemn contemplation. Here the cowboy's patience being completely exhausted-with the intention of switching old Blossom from her last stronghold, he caught up, and began tearing from the earth, that one long straggling stem of lilac which I had endeavoured to replace in somewhat of its former position. "Hold! hold!" I cried, springing forward with the vehement gesture of impassioned feeling-"Have you no respect for the ashes of the

dead? Dare you thus violate with sacrilegious hands the last sad sanctuary of faithful love?" The boy stood like one petrified, stared at me for a moment, with a look of indescribable perplexity, then screwing one corner of his mouth almost into contact with the corresponding corner of one crinkled-upeye at the same time shoving up his old ragged hat, and scratching his curly pate; and having, as I suppose, by the help of that operation, construed my vehement address into the language of inquiry, he set himself very methodically about satisfying my curiosity on every point wherever he conceived it possible I might have interrogated him-taking his cue, with some ingenuity from the one word of my oration, which was familiar to his ear- -"Dead! Ees, Squoire been dead twelve months last Whitsuntide; and thick be his'n moniment, an' madam was married last week to our measter, an thick be our cow-"

Oh, Reader!

Is it to be wondered at, that, since that adventure, I have never been disposed to look with an un-glistening, and even cynical eye, on those same flower-plot graves? Nay, that, at sight of them, I feel an extraordinary degree of hard-heartedness stealing over me? I cannot quit the sub

ject without offering a word or two of well-meant advice to all disconsolate survivors-widows more especiallyas to the expediency or non-expediency of indulging this flowery grief. Possibly, were I to obey the dictates of my own tastes and feelings, I should say, "Be content with a simple record-perhaps a scriptural sentence, on a plain headstone. Suffer not the inscription to become defaced and illegible, nor rank weeds to wave over it; and smooth be the turf of the green hillock! But if-to use a French phrase-Il faut affichér ses regrets— if there must be effect, sentimentalities, prettinesses, urns, flowers-not only a few scattered blossoms, but a regular planted border, like the garnish of a plateau;-then, let me beseech you, fair inconsolables! be cautious in your proceedings-Temper with discreet foresight (if that be possible,) the first agonizing burst of sensibility-Take the counsels of sage experience-Temporise with the as yet unascertained nature of your own feelings-Proclaim not those vegetable vows of eternal fidelity-Refrain, at least, from the trowel and the spade-Dig not-plant not-For one year only-for the first year, at least-For one year only, I beseech you-sow annuals.

IN parts of Warwickshire, and some of the adjacent counties, more especially in the churchyards of the larger towns, the frightful fashion of black tombstones is almost universal. Black tombstones, tall and slim, and lettered in gold, looking, for all the world, like bolt upright coffin lids. I marvel the worthy natives do not go a step farther in their tasteful system, and coat their churches over with the same lugubrious hue, exempting only the brass weathercocks, and the gilded figures on the clock faces. The whole scene would unquestionably be far more in keeping, and even sublime in stupendous ugliness. Some village burial grounds have, however, escaped this barbarous adornment, and in Warwickshire particularly, and within the circuit of a few miles round Warwick itself, are very many small picturesque hamlet churches, each surrounded by its lowly flock of green graves, and grey head-stones; the churchyards, for the most part, se

parated only by a sunk fence or a slight railing from the little sheltered grass-plot of a small neat rectory, the casements of which generally front the long east window of the church. I like this proximity of the pastor's dwelling to his Master's house; nay, of the abode of the living to the sanctuary of the dead. It seems to me to remove in part the great barrier of separation between the two worlds. The end of life, it is true, lies before us.

The end of this life, with all its host of vanities and perturbations ;but immediately from thence, we step upon the threshold of the holy place, before the gates of which no commissioned angel stands with a flaming sword, barring our entrance to the tree of life. It would seem to me that thus abiding, as it were, under the very shadow of the sacred walls, and within sight of man's last earthly resting-place, I should feel, as in a charmed circle, more secure from the power of evil influences, than if ex