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Change—so busy in this eventful century with Life—is busier yet with Death. There is no late step in the progress of opinion or the habits of society so broad as the distinction between the city Churchyard and the suburban Cemetery. Nor is it possible for change to take a healthier or wiser direction. In those dark, pent-up, narrow nooks of the busy town to which past generations have been consigned,—in those forlorn, railed-in, grassless recesses, which hold, in mingled heaps, the bones of the city's forefathers, the pure and exquisite sentiment that should embalm the memory of the dead is stifled. The stir of the populous street—the rattling wheels—the hoarse cries—the ring of laughter and the yelling of oaths—the grey smoke that canopies the scene, or the yellow fog that envelops all,—combine to banish from the home of the departed every idea of the repose and quiet which had else sanctified it, and weigh us down with a sense of things the most sickening and repulsive. The hallowed associations which drew us gently to the spot are scared and driven back by a quick succession of ghastly images. What should be awe is terror—what should be pity is disgust. When we think of the dead afterwards, it is a thought that has no sweetness in it—like a flower without perfume. Our sympathies turn from the beloved object that lies below—we forget even the one most precious to us—to commiserate the strangers who dwell around, on the brink of the churchyard, inhaling its unwholesome vapours, familiarized with its loathsome secrets, and witnessing its profanation.
The desecration with which continued interments in most of these churchyards is inevitably attended has of late years greatly diminished, and there is a hope that it will soon wholly cease. What an escape from the atmosphere of London burialplaces to the air of Kensal Green,—from the choked charnel-house to that verdant wide expanse, studded with white tombs of infinite shapes, and stone-marked graves covered with flowers of every brilliant dye!
With what a different impulse does memory revisit this Asylum of the Dead! The weight with which we had contemplated the mortal relics of the Immortal lost to us, flies off as we approach. We meditate with serenity; we retire, with cheerfulness mingling in the calm that has stolen over us. Here there has been nothing to repel, nothing to shock, nothing to wound the profound and sensitive feeling. The mourner here has held uninterrupted intercourse with the mourned. Kneeling beside the bed of the Sleeper, the watcher Love has felt for a time that Death was but a dream, and Life little more. Affection has said, in the language of the Hebrew in his vision, "Let these dry bones live!" and, as Light followed the creative Word, the lost has been restored, and the separated have been joined.
While sorrow may be thus soothed, while anguish and terror may be thus softened into a tender regret, it must be a cold and hard philosophy that would deem us victims to a morbid delusion, and endeavour to limit the imagination to the field of the senses. "Nature is above art in that respect." Not only do the remarkable beauty of the scene, and the touching evidences of human affection which everywhere present themselves to the wanderer through its labyrinths, pour balm upon the troubled heart that heaves for the Dead; but are not the Dying also cheered by thoughts derived from the loveliness and the serenity of the place! A friend, who has since become an inhabitant of another cemetery,[1] has recorded a touching incident connected with the cemetery at Kensal Green. It is related of Mr. Broughton, the surgeon. Previous to the operation, the effect of which was so fatal, he was driven in his carriage to the gate, and "sat there for some minutes looking in." Within a few days, amongst the stones, and shrubs, and flowers on which he thus gazed curiously, was his body deposited, according to the instructions in his will. "This story," it is truly remarked, "is beautifully expressive of a state of mind calmly
- ↑ Edward Chatfield, the artist; esteemed in that character, beloved in every other. He is buried in the cemetery at Norwood.