Cemetery burial, or Sepulture, ancient and modern / by George Milner, a director of the Hull General Cemetery Company.

  • Milner, George (Director of the Hull General Cemetery Company)
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cemetery burial, or Sepulture, ancient and modern / by George Milner, a director of the Hull General Cemetery Company. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    nil classes. 1 am not now atlclressing myself to those who hold with Voltaire, “that death is an eternal sleepbut to such as have “a livelier hope of thin^ to come.” What mortal lesson may be learnt; what pure and holy fwbtigs can be aroused in the breast ? what but dread ami disgust, I would ask, must invariably be pnxluced, on visiting our crowded burial-places, filled with rank weeds, littered rubbish, and dilapidated tomb-stones, tumblwl together in e\ery variety of form ? Here the widow cannot silently oniament the grave of her departed husband—the being she loved so di'arly, and svhose loss can never be replaced on earth ; or the affectionate and tender-hearted child, plant a flower on the tomb of a depart<‘d jjarent, showing that those feelings of veneration and respect still remain, whicli can seldom be erased from a sensitive mind. “Why,” says Washington Irving, “should we seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and spread horror around the tomb of those we loved ? Tlie grave should be surrounded by everj' thing that might inspin- kindness and veneration for the dea«l, or that might win the living to virtue. It is the place, not of disgust and cbsinay, but of sorrow and meditation,” Who is there that has visited I’erc hr chaise, or the other continental cemeteries, but must feel grieved that England, who ha.s raised so high the standard of civilization and high moral feeling, shoidd in this particular lag lu'hind ? A mo- dem writer in alluding to K-re la chaise, says—“With what fervour of ndigious love do we not behold the simple girl kneeling with uplift eye and hand on the green sod that covers all that endeared her to existence, till, overwhel- med with burning, choking regrets—as idle as they are uncontrolable—she sinks prostrate on the cohl earth that now shn)nds tliat Imsom which once nestled her j'oung hojws and fears! There have I seen the pale, the haggard youth,—to all appearanct's a studtnit,—seated mournfully by the side of a tomi), absorlied in deep thought, heedless of the idlers w lio pu.ssed by him, looking at him pt-rhaps with amUMiipt!—heedless of the .swift flight of time, wliich •hrouded him imperceptibly in darkm?s8, until be was Warned by the jftiardian of the dead tliat it wiw time to depart—and to dejiurt alone ! No inscription recorded the