On the laying out, planting, and managing of cemeteries; and on the improvement of churchyards. With sixty engravings / by J. C. Loudon.

  • Loudon, J. C. (John Claudius), 1783-1843.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the laying out, planting, and managing of cemeteries; and on the improvement of churchyards. With sixty engravings / by J. C. Loudon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    returns.' The gay and the gitldy are reinindt-d that their 'gibes and jokes must ere while for ever cease, and are led to reflect that they too must die; and, as ' by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made belter,' the religious man, instructed on tiie narrowness of the boundary which separates him from those who were the 'sun and centre' of his nearest and dearest regards on earth, looks forward not only without fear, but with joy and exultation, to the period when, that boundary being for ever broken down, they shall, in their happy experience, find that, as they were loving and be- loved in their lives, ' in their deaths they were not divided.' In the mazes of Pere la Chaise, we feel walking as in the porch of eternity, and our heart is at once impressed with a sense of the evanescence and the value of time. There, the instability of all human affairs is emphatically and eloquently taught by the dread silence of the tomb, and unequivocally beheld in the mere change which a few years have produced on the garden itself; for, within the stately mansion whose ruins are now on every side surrounded by melancholy tombs, did the favourite confessor of Louis XIV., the most powerful and most per- secuting Jesuit of his time, erst pass his hours of pastime and of pleasure; and the disciples of Jansenius and Molina now repose, in freedom and in peace, in that place to which, when alive, they did not dare even to approach; while the fierce disputes which they mutually excited through the Christian world are fallen, like themselves, into neglect and oblivion !* In Scotland it is of every-day occurrence, to find the lie given to the most pompous monuments, a few months after their erection, by the moss over- growing and obscuring the epitaph which vows and intends unceasing re- membrance of the dead. In the Cemetery of Mount Louis, however, the feeling of recollection is exemplified to live a very long time after the en- graving of the sepulchral stone and the wonted period prescribed to outward mourning. It is there the custom for surviving friends to visit the tombs of their relatives, and, as a token of recollection and respect to their memory, to weave a garland of flowers, and hang it on their monument. At every turn the eye is arrested by the tender proof of some late friendly visitation. Flowers, as yet fresh and unfaded, are seen scattered over the not yet verdant sod. The greenhouse myrtle flourishes in the parterre dedicated to affection and love ; the chaste forget-me-not blooms over the ashes of a faithful friend ; the green laurel shades the cenotaph of the hero ; and the drooping willow, planted by the hand of the orphan, weeps over the grave of the parent. Everv thing is there tasteful, classical, poetical, and eloquent. In that asylum of death, there is nothing fo md save that which should touch the heart or soothe the afflicted soul, nothi-g save that which should awaken tender re- collections or excite religious feelings. In one word, the Cemetery of Pere la Chaise is the spot, of all others, dedicated to the genius of memory; and the one where a more powerful sermon is daily preached than ever fell from the lips of a Fenelon, a Massillon, or a Bossuet. Here the bodies of the * It is from this confessor, Pere la Chaise, that the cemetery derives its appellation. By an edict in 1804, |)rohibitiug burial in churches and inha- bited places, the garden and pleasure-grounds of the late confessor were con- verted into a burial-ground, chiefly for those persons of a higher circle who could afford to purchase a grave and rear a uionument; and, at this moment [1831], the whole of this extensive enclosure is nearly covered with tombs and monuments. [We have seen a R^'port on this cemetery, made to the French Government, ilated 1842, by which it appears to be so much crowded as to require enlargement, and also that much ground has been lost in con- sequence of its not having been laid out originally on some systematic plan. In this Re|)ort the want of walks and roads, and of drainage, is particidarly deplored, as well as the dilapidated and decaying state of the monuments.]