persons find sympathy in their feelings about their dead friends, or
whether they have to do without it; those, and they are not a few, who
are entirely doubtful about a life beyond the grave. There are not a few
Christians, I believe, and certainly many who are Christians only
nominally or not at all, who are not satisfied about whether conscious
life ends here, or under what circumstances it will be continued or
resumed if this life be but a stage of being. Such persons can meet
nothing congenial with their emotions in any cemeteries that I know of;
and they must feel doubly desolate when, as bereaved mourners, they walk
through rows of inscriptions which all breathe more than hope, certainty
of renewed life and intercourse, under circumstances which seem to be
reckoned on as ascertained. How strange it must be to such to read of
the trumpet and the clouds, of the tribunal and the choirs of the
saints, as literal realities, expected like the next morning's sunrise,
and awaited as undoubtedly as the stroke of death, while they are
sending their thoughts abroad meekly, anxiously, imploringly, through
the universe, and diving into the deepest abysses of their own spirits
to find a resting-place for their timid hopes! For such there is little
sympathy anywhere, and something very like mockery in the language of
the tombs.
Evidences of the two extremes of feeling on this matter are found, I am
told, in Père la Chaise and Mount Auburn. In Père la Chaise every
expression of mourning is to be found; few or none of hope. The desolate
mother, the bereaved brother, the forlorn child, the despairing husband,
all breathe their complaint, with more or less of selfishness or of
tenderness; but there is no light from the future shining over the
place. In Mount Auburn, on the contrary, there is nothing else. A
visiter from a strange planet, ignorant of mortality, would take this
place to be the sanctum of creation. Every step teems with the promise
of life. Beauty is about to "spring up out of ashes, and life out of the
dust;" and Humanity seems to be waiting, with acclamations ready on its
lips, for the new birth. That there has been any past is little more
than matter of inference. All the woes of bereavement are veiled; all
sighs hushed; all tears hidden or wiped away, and thanksgiving and joy
abound instead. Between these two states of mind, the seriously,
innocently doubtful stand alone and most desolate. They are speechless,
for none question them or care to know their solicitudes, for they are
an unsupposed class in a Christian community. In no consecrated ground
are there tombs bearing an expression of doubt or fear; yet, with the
mind's eye, I always see such while treading the paths of a cemetery. It
cannot be but that, among the diversity of minds diversely trained,
there must be some less easily satisfied than others, some skeptical in
proportion to the intensity of their affection for the departed; and it
is to these that the sympathies of the happier should be given. If the
rich should be mindful of the poor, if those who are ashore during the
storm cannot but look out for the tempest-driven bark, those who part
with their friends in sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection
should bear in mind with all tenderness such as have to part with their
friends without the solace of that hope. Not that anything can be done
for them beyond recognising them as fellow-mourners laid under a deeper
burden of grief, and needing, therefore, a larger liberty of expression
than themselves.
While rambling about in the cheerful glades of Mount Auburn, such
thoughts occurred to me, as I hope they often do to others. To us, in
whom education, reason, the prophecies of natural religion, and the
promises of the gospel unite their influence to generate a perfect
belief in a life beyond the grave, it is scarcely possible to conceive
how these scenes must appear to one whose prospects are different or
doubtful. But it is good for our human sympathies and for our mutual
reverence to make the attempt. The conclusion would probably be, with
others as with me, that the consecration of this place to hope and
triumph would make it too sad for the hesitating and hopeless; and that
such probably turn away from the spot where all is too bright and lovely
for the desolate of heart.
It is, indeed, a place for the living to delight in while watching the
sleep of the dead. There is no gloom about it to any but those who look
abroad through the gloom of their own minds. It is a mazy paradise,
where every forest tree of the western continent grows, and every bird
to which the climate is congenial builds its nest. The birds seem to
have found out that within that enclosure they are to be unmolested, and
there is a twittering in every tree. The clearings are few: the woods
preside, with here and there a sunny hillside and a shady dell, and a
gleaming pond catching the eye at intervals. From the summit of the
eminence, the view abroad over the woods is wonderfully beautiful: of
the city of Boston on an opposite hill; of Fresh Pond on another side;
of the University; and of the green country, studded with dwellings, and
terminating in cloudlike uplands. Every aspect of busy life seems to be
brought full into the view of the gazer from this "place of sleep." If
he looks immediately below him, he sees here and there a monument
shining among the trees; and he can hide himself in a moment in the
shades where, as the breeze passes, the birch twinkles among the solemn
pines.
As the burial lots have to be described with reference to different
portions of the enclosure, every hill, every avenue, footpath, and dell
must have its name. This naming might have spoiled all if it had been
mismanaged; but this has been skilfully guarded against. The avenues and
hills are called after forest trees, the footpaths after shrubs and
flowers. Beech, Cypress, and Poplar Avenues; Hazel, Vine, and Jasmine
Paths; and so on. The monuments must, of course, be ordered by the taste
of the holders of lots; and the consequence necessarily is occasional
incongruity.
This place arose out of a happy union between two societies; one which
had long wished to provide a private rural cemetery, and the
Massachusetts Horticultural Society. It occurred to some of the members
of the latter that the objects of the two associations might be
advantageously united; and upon a tract of ground, fit for the purpose,
being offered, no time was lost in carrying the scheme into execution.
This was seven years ago. The tract of ground lay at a distance of four
miles from Boston, and consisted of seventy-two acres. The protection of
the legislature was secured at its session in 1831. A large number of
lots was immediately taken, and a day was fixed for the consecration of
the ground by a public religious service. The day fixed was the 24th of
September, 1831. The weather was delicious, and the day one which will
never be forgotten by those who assisted in its services.
A deep dell, almost circular, was fitted up with seats. The speakers
stood at the bottom, with a pine wood behind them, and at their feet a
pond shining with water-lilies. From the form of the place, every tone
of the speakers' voices was heard by the topmost row of persons on the
verge of the dell. After instrumental music by the Boston band, there
was a prayer by a venerable professor of the University; and a hymn,
written for the occasion, was sung by all the persons present to the
tune of Old Hundred. Judge Story delivered the address; a beautiful
composition, full of the feelings natural to one who was about to
deposite here a rich heart's treasure, and who remembered that here he
and all who heard him were probably to lie down to their rest.
Judge Story had made me promise at Washington that I would not go to
Mount Auburn till he could take me there. The time arrived the next
August, and early on a warm afternoon we set forth. Several carriages
were at the gate, for the place is a favourite resort on other accounts
besides its being "a place of sleep." The gate at the entrance is of
imitation granite, for which it is to be hoped the real stone will soon
be substituted. The structure is Egyptian, as are the emblems, the
winged globe, the serpent, and the lotus. It is rather strange that the
inscription should be taken from the Old Testament, even from
Ecclesiastes: "Then shall the dust return to the earth, and the spirit
unto God who gave it."
One of the most conspicuous monuments is Spurzheim's, visible almost
immediately on entering the place. It is a fac-simile of Scipio's tomb!
I could not understand its idea, nor did I meet with any one else who
did; nor is it easy to conceive how anything appropriate to Scipio could
suit Spurzheim. I was informed that the fact was that the monument
happened to arrive just at the time of Spurzheim's death; and that the
committee appointed to dispense his funeral honours saved themselves
trouble by purchasing the marble. It stands well, on a green mound, on
the left-hand side of the avenue. Mrs. Hannah Adams, the historian of
the Jews, had the honour of being the first to be interred in this
cemetery. The white obelisk is frequent, and looks well in a place so
thickly wooded. Under one of these lie five children of Judge Story,
removed from another place of sepulture to this beautiful spot. The
Connecticut freestone is much in use, and its reddish hue harmonizes
well with what surrounds it. It is particularly fit for the Egyptian
fronts to vaults hollowed out of the hillsides. The objection to it for
tombs which have to receive an inscription is that it will bear none but
gold letters. The granite fronts of Egyptian tombs look well. I thought
them the most beautiful burial-places I ever saw, the grass growing
thick on the hillside above and on either hand; and, in some instances,
a little blooming garden smiling in front. I saw many lots of ground
well tended, and wearing the air of luxuriant gardens; some surrounded
with palings, some with posts and chains, and others with hedges of
cypress or belts of acacia. Many separate graves were studded with
flowers, the narrowest and gayest of gardens. Of all the inscriptions,
the one which pleased me most was on a monument erected by an only
surviving sister to her brother: "Jesus saith unto her, 'Thy brother
shall rise again.'"
While writing I have been struck by the strong resemblance between the
retrospect of travel from home and that of life from the cemetery. In
each contemplation the hosts of human beings who have been seen acting,
suffering, and meditating, rise up before the mind's eye as in a kind of
judgment scene, except that they rise up, not to be judged, but to
instruct. The profit of travel is realized at home in the solitude of
the study, and the true meaning of human life (as far as its meaning can
become known to us here) is best made out from its place of rest. While
busy among strangers, one is carried away by sympathy and by prejudice
from the point whence foreign society can be viewed with anything like
impartiality; one cannot but hear the mutual criminations of parties;
one cannot but be perplexed by the mutual misrepresentations of
fellow-citizens; one cannot but sympathize largely with all in turn,
since there is a large mixture of truth in all views about which people
are strongly persuaded. It is only after sitting down alone at home that
the traveller can separate the universal truth from the partial error
with which he has sympathized, and can make some approximation towards
assurance as to what he has learned and what he believes. So it is in
the turmoil of life. While engaged in it, we are ignorantly persuaded,
and liable, therefore, to be shaken from our certainty; we are
disproportionately moved, and we sympathize with incompatibilities, so
as to be sure of disappointment and humiliation inflicted through our
best sensibilities. In the place of retrospect we may find our repose
again in contemplating our ignorance and weakness, and ascertaining the
conviction and strength which they have wrought out for us.
What is gained by living and travelling?
One of the most striking and even amusing results is the perception of
the transient nature of troubles. The thoughtful traveller feels
something like wonder and amusement at himself for being so depressed by
evils as he finds himself in the midst of long-idealized objects. He is
surprised at his own sufferings from hunger, cold, heat, and weariness;
and at his being only prevented by shame from passing some great object
unseen, if he has to rouse himself from sleep to look at it, or to
forego a meal for its sake. The next time he is refreshed, he wonders
how his troubles could ever so affect him; and, when at home, he looks
through the picture-gallery of his memory, the afflictions of past hours
would have vanished, their very occurrence would be denied but for the
record in the journal. The contemptible entries about cold, hunger, and
sleepiness stand, ludicrously enough, among notices of cataracts and
mountains, and of moral conflicts in the senates of nations. And so with
life. We look back upon our pangs about objects of desire, as if it were
the object and not the temper of pursuit which was of importance. We
look back on our sufferings from disease, from disappointment, from
suspense, in times when the great moral events of our lives, or even of
the age, were impending, and we disregarded them. We were mourning over
some petty loss or injury while a new region of the moral universe was
about to be disclosed to us; or fretting about our "roast chicken and
our little game at cards," while the liberties of an empire were being
lost or won.
Worse than our own little troubles, probably, has been the fear and
sorrow of hurting others. One of the greatest of a traveller's hardships
is the being aware that he must be perpetually treading on somebody's
toes. Passing from city to city, from one group of families to another,
where the divisions of party and of sect, the contrariety of interests,
and the world of domestic circumstance are all unknown to him, he can
hardly open his lips without wounding somebody; and it makes him all the
more anxious if, through the generosity of his entertainers, he never
hears of it. No care of his own can save him from his function of
torturer. He cannot speak of religion, morals, and politics; he cannot
speak of insanity, intemperance, or gaming, or even of health, riches,
fair fame, and good children, without danger of rousing feelings of
personal remorse or family shame in some, or the bitter sense of
bereavement in others. Little or nothing has been said of this as one of
the woes of travelling; but, in my own opinion, this is the direction in
which the fortitude of the traveller is the most severely tried. Yet, in
the retrospect, it seems even good that we should have been obliged thus
to call the generosity and forbearance of our hosts into exercise. They
are, doubtless, benefited by the effort; and we may perhaps be gainers,
the direct operation of forbearance and forgiveness being to enhance
affection. The regard of those whom we have wounded may perhaps be
warmer than if we had never hurt them. It is much the same with men's
mutual inflictions in life. None of us, especially none who are frank
and honest, can speak what we think, and act according to what we
believe, without giving pain in many directions. It is very painful, but
quite unavoidable. In the retrospect, however, we are able to smile on
the necessity, and to conclude that, as we have been willing to bear our
share of the wounding from others, and should, perhaps, have been sorry
if it had not happened, it is probable that others may have regarded us
and our inflictions in the same way.
Nothing is more conspicuous in the traveller's retrospect than the fact
how little external possession has to do with happiness. As he wanders
back over city and village, plantation and prairie, he sees again care
on the brow of the merchant and mirth in the eyes of the labourer; the
soulless faces of the rich Shakers rise up before him, side by side with
the gladsome countenance of the ruined abolitionist. Each class kindly
pities the one below it in power and wealth; the traveller pities none
but those who are wasting their energies in the exclusive pursuit of
either. Generally speaking, they have all an equal endowment of the
things from which happiness is really derived. They have, in pretty
equal distribution, health, senses, and their pleasures, homes,
children, pursuits, and successes. With all these things in common, the
one point of difference in their respective amounts of possession of
more than they can at present eat, use, and enjoy, seems to him quite
unworthy of all the compassion excited by it; though the compassion,
having something amiable in it, is of a kindly use as far as it goes. In
a cemetery, the thoughtless are startled into the same perception. How
destitute are the dead in their graves! How naked is the spirit gone
from its warm housings and environs of luxuries! This is the first
thought. The next is, was it ever otherwise? Had these luxuries ever
anything to do with the peace of the spirit, except as affording a
pursuit for the employment of its energies? Is not as vigorous and
gladsome a mind to be found abroad in the fields, or singing at the
mill, as doing the honours of the drawing-room? and, if it were not so,
what words could we find strong enough for the cruelty of the decree
under which every human being is compelled to enter his grave solitary
and destitute? In the retrospect of the recent traveller in America, the
happiest class is clearly that small one of the original abolitionists;
men and women wholly devoted to a lofty pursuit, and surrendering for it
much that others most prize: and, in the retrospect of the traveller
through life, the most eminently blessed come forth from among all ranks
and orders of men, some being rich and others poor; some illustrious and
others obscure; but all having one point of resemblance, that they have
not staked their peace on anything so unreal as money or fame.
As for the worth of praise, a traveller cannot have gone far without
finding it out. He has been praised and blamed at every turn; and he
soon sees that what people think of him matters to themselves and not to
him. He applies this to himself, and finds confirmation. It is ludicrous
to suppose that what he thinks of this man and that, whose motives and
circumstances he can never completely understand, should be of lasting
importance to the subjects of his observation, while he feels it to be
very important to his own peace and state of temper that he should
admire as much and despise as little as reason will allow. That this is
not more felt and acted upon is owing to the confined intercourses of
the majority of men. If, like the traveller, they were for a long time
exposed to a contrariety of opinions respecting themselves, they would
arrive at the conviction which rises "by natural exhalation" from the
field of graves, that men's mutual judgments are almost insignificant to
the objects of them, while immeasurably important to those who form
them. When we look about us upon this obelisk and that urn, what matter
the applauses and censures of the neighbours of the departed, in the
presence of the awful facts here declared, that he has lived and is
gone? In this mighty transaction between himself and his Maker, how
insignificant to him are the comments of beings between whom and himself
there could exist no complete understanding in this life! But there is
no overrating the consequences to himself of having lived with high or
low models before his eyes; in a spirit of love or a spirit of contempt;
in a process of generous or disparaging interpretation of human actions.
His whole future condition and progress may be affected by it.
Out of this matter of mutual opinion arises a cheering emotion, both to
the retrospective traveller and to the thinker among the tombs. Each
foreign companion of the one, and each who lies buried about the path of
the other, has had his hero, and even succession of heroes, among the
living. I know not what those who despise their kind can make of this
fact, that every human being whom we know has found in every stage of
his conception of moral beauty some living exemplification which
satisfied him for the time. The satisfaction is only temporary, it is
true, and the admiration fades when the satisfaction is impaired; but
this only shows the vigour of the moral nature and its capacity of
progress. The fact that every man is able to make idols, though he must
"find them clay," is a proof of the vast amount of good which human
character presents to every observer. The reality of this is very
striking in the existence of villagers, who find so much excellence
round about them that they cannot believe any other part of God's world
is so good as their village; but the effect to the traveller of going
from village to village, from city to city, during his wanderings of ten
thousand miles, and finding the same worship, the same prejudice, born
of mutual reverence and love, wherever he goes, is exhilarating to his
heart of hearts. The testimony at the same time to the love and
existence of goodness is so overpowering, that it must subdue
misanthropy itself, if only misanthropy could be brought into the
presence of a large number of the human race; which, it may be
suspected, has never been done. When we extend our view from the field
of travel to the world of the dead, and remember that every one of the
host has had his succession of heroes and demigods, and, probably, of
worshippers also, what words can express the greatness of the homage
rendered to goodness? It drowns all the praises practically offered to
the powers of evil, from the first hour of sin and sorrow till now.
The mysterious pain of partings presses upon the returned traveller and
the surviver with nearly equal force. I do not know whether this wo is
usually taken into the estimate of travellers when they are counting the
cost of their scheme before setting out; but I know that it deserves to
be. I believe that many would not go if they could anticipate the misery
of such partings as those which must be encountered in a foreign
country, in long dreary succession, and without more hope than in
parting with the dying. The chances of meeting again are small. For a
time grief sooths itself by correspondence; but this cannot last, as one
family group after another opens its arms to the stranger, and gives him
a home only that he must vacate it for another. The correspondence
slackens, fails, and the parties are to one another as if they were
dead, with the sad difference that there is somewhat less faith in each
other than if they were in circumstances in which it is physically
impossible that they could communicate. To the surviver of intercourse,
in either place of meditation, there remains the heartsoreness from the
anguish of parting; that pain which, like physical pain, takes us by
surprise with its bitterness at each return, and disposes us, at length,
to either cowardice or recklessness; and each of these survivers may be
conscious of some visitations of jealousy, jealousy lest the absent
should be learning to forget the past in new interests and connexions.