_The Burial Places of Europe_
According to the XII Tables (the earliest code of Roman Law), burial
within the walls of ancient Rome was strictly prohibited, though the
Senate reserved the right, in rare instances, to make exception as a
mark of special honor. Many of the Roman families preferred cremation,
while others adhered to the custom of unburnt burial. To accommodate the
former, large chambers, filled with niches or recesses, called
_Columbaria_, were provided, as receptacles for the vases containing the
ashes left after burning. For the latter, the sarcophagus, the
mausoleum, the catacomb, the excavation in the tufa rock, furnished the
usual sepulture. These burial places lined the roads leading out of
Rome, and many of them still remain along the Appian Way. The frontage
of the principal roads became so valuable for burial purposes that it
was customary to add after the inscription of names and dates on the
monuments a record of the number of feet in the front and depth of every
lot. The most ancient of the Roman burial places still in existence is
the tomb of the Scipios, in the fork between the _Via Appia_ and the
_Via Latina_, and the most magnificent mausoleum was that of Hadrian,
which was lined throughout with Parian marble, and surrounded by rows of
statues between columns of variegated Oriental marbles. Its chambers
were rifled by the Goths under Alaric; it was afterwards converted into
a fortress by Belisarius; and for centuries it has been known as the
Castle of S. Angelo.
The Campo Santo of Pisa is the prototype of the covered or cloistered
cemetery, having been constructed in the thirteenth century. The vast
rectangle within this singular structure is surrounded by arcades of
white marble, and within their enclosed spaces the walls are covered
with historic paintings by famous Tuscan artists. Aside from its
strange-looking sarcophagi, its antique devices, and its curious
inscriptions, there are two objects of more than passing interest. The
earth, to the depth of several feet, was brought from Palestine, not so
much from sentimental considerations, as because, of supposed antiseptic
and rapidly decomposing properties. The other, hanging on the west wall,
is the enormous blockading chain that was used in the harbor of Pisa. It
was captured by the Genoese forces in 1362, and restored to Pisa in
1848.
The southern cemetery of Munich, just outside the Sendling Gate, is
another cloistered rectangular structure, or campo santo, less
attractive historically than that of Pisa, being quite modern, but in
point of decorative art, inasmuch as Munich is one of the favored
centres of the fine arts, infinitely superior. It is a museum of tombs,
most of whose occupants were wealthy enough to obtain from the best
sculpture of the day “a bond in stone and everduring bronze” to
perpetuate their memories. In the Leichenhaus (dead house) adjoining may
be seen through glass windows the bodies which are customarily deposited
there for three days before burial. They are placed in their coffins in
easy and natural postures, they are arrayed as usual in life, and
flowers and other accessories are so arranged as to make them appear as
if asleep. There is a similar Leichenhaus in Frankfort, and the primary
object is the same in both, to obviate the danger of premature
interment. On one of the fingers of each corpse is placed a ring
attached to a light cord connected with a bell in the room of the
warder, who is always on the watch.
Among the various modes of burial on the continent, none are so
revolting to an Englishman or an American as the use of a common
_fosse_, or pit. In one of the cemeteries of Naples is a series of 365
pits, one for every day of the year. One pit is opened each day, the
dead of that day are laid in it, and it is filled with earth containing
a large quantity of lime. A year afterwards this earth with its
decomposed contents is removed, and the pit placed in readiness for the
annual repetition of the burial of new bodies with fresh earth and fresh
lime.
In the basement of the Capuchin Church in Rome is the charnel-house or
cemetery of the Friars. It is divided into recesses, and the walls are
festooned with the bones of disinterred Capuchins, arranged in fanciful
forms, such as stars, crosses, crowns, shields, lamps, etc. The
arrangement of the bones is ingenious, and more grotesque than horrible.
Here and there, in niches, entire skeletons are placed in various
attitudes. At the death of a friar the body is deposited in the oldest
grave, and the bones of the former occupant are removed to the
_ossuarium_, and prepared for the additional decoration of the vaults.
In the Church of St. Ursula, in Cologne, are preserved the bones of
eleven thousand virgins—more or less—who were barbarously massacred by
the Huns because they refused to break the vows of chastity. These
osseous relics are piled on shelves built in the walls for their
accommodation and display. It is hard for an American, whether churchman
or heretic, to comprehend the meaning or purpose or taste of such a
strange anatomical exhibition.
There are Americans who go to Nuremberg without visiting the
_Johannisfriedhof_, the church-yard of St. John. They miss many things
worth seeing in this extremely quaint spot,—monumental designs,
intricate iron work, bronze tablets on horizontal stones, which have no
parallels or imitations elsewhere. They miss the “Emigravit,” etc.
inscribed on the tombstone of Albert Dürer, and referred to by Mr.
Longfellow in his lines descriptive of Nuremberg; they miss the strange
monument to Hans Sachs; and they miss the mortuary chapel of the
Holzschuher family which contains some of the finest works of the old
sculptor, Adam Krafft. But people have differing tastes, and those of
our countrymen referred to as not caring a fig for the queer bronze
bas-reliefs in the church-yard of St. John, make it a point to include
the catacombs of Rome and Paris within the range of their visits in
these cities. In Paris it is much easier to trace the course of the
catacombs on charts, to learn above ground the history of the
transformation of the old quarries into subterranean charnel-houses, and
to accept the statistical statement that three millions of skeletons are
deposited there, without verifying the assertion by descending into the
excavations and counting the bones. Faithfully “doing” the crypts of the
churches in Paris, as elsewhere, is fatiguing enough. It is well to
stand by the coffin of Victor Hugo in the lower recesses of the
Pantheon, or on the spot in the _Chapelle Expiatoire_, where Marie
Antoinette was originally buried, or near the ashes of the celebrities
in the undercroft of St. Denis, but fatigue eventually draws the line.
There is one crypt of which no one ever tires, no matter how frequent
the visits may be repeated. It is directly beneath the gilded dome of
the _Invalides_, and holds the porphyry monolith in which repose the
remains of Napoleon. Around the top of the portico is a circular marble
balustrade over which the visitor looks down at the colossal bronze
caryatides and marble statues which surround the tomb. The height of the
dome is 323 feet. Through an ingenious arrangement of an upper window a
flood of golden light is made to strike the high altar near the tomb in
a singularly effective manner. As one glances from that altar to the
magnificent frescoes around, from the splendid statuary to the glories
of the torn and faded battle flags, from the mosaic laurels on the floor
of the crypt to the grandeur of the dome, he feels that this is art’s
supreme effort to make the resting place of the warrior at once the most
beautiful and the most majestic tomb that has ever been reared to a
mortal.
What a broad contrast between this imperial magnificence and the simple
and quiet grave of Thomas Gray in the church-yard of Stoke Pogis, the
scene of his immortal Elegy; or the ivy-covered tomb of Walter Scott in
a sheltered nook of the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey; or the vault in the
chancel of the parish church on the bank of the Avon, at Stratford,
which holds the ashes of William Shakespeare. Visitors to Naples
hesitate to climb the steep rocks near the Grotto of Posilipo, to visit
the alleged tomb of Virgil, because authoritative writers doubt whether
the author of the Æneid was buried there. But we know that in that quiet
spot at the southeast corner of the venerable church of Stoke manor,
Gray was buried, and we are told that on the evening before the capture
of Quebec and the overthrow of the French dominion in Canada, General
Wolfe said, “I would rather be the author of the Elegy in a Country
Church-yard than to win a victory to-morrow.” And we might ask, who
would not rather be the author of Hamlet than the victor of Austerlitz
or Marengo?
“Such graves as theirs are pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined;
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind.”
What Santa Croce is to Italy, what the Valhalla is to Germany, what the
Pantheon was intended to be to France—the shrine of genius—Westminster
Abbey is to England. Scores of kings and queens are buried in this
National Sanctuary, but though it is still the place for the coronation,
it is no longer the place for the interment of royalty. It has become
the sepulchre of the kings of great thought and of grand action. Says
Dean Stanley in his Historical Memorials of the Abbey, “As the Council
of the nation and the Courts of Law have pressed into the Palace of
Westminster, and engirdled the very Throne itself, so the ashes of the
great citizens of England have pressed into the sepulchre of the Kings
and surrounded them as with a guard of honor after their death.... Let
those who are inclined to contrast the placid dignity of our recumbent
Kings with Chatham gesticulating from the Northern Transept, or Pitt
from the western door, or Shakespeare leaning on his column in Poets’
Corner, or Wolfe expiring by the Chapel of St. John, look upon them as
in their different ways keeping guard over the shrine of our monarchy
and our laws.”
The Abbey does not monopolize the ashes of England’s greatest dead. Many
who were illustrious in arms, in arts, in song, in statesmanship, rest
in another Valhalla, St. Paul’s Cathedral. Notwithstanding the
passionate exclamation of Nelson, “A peerage, or Westminster Abbey,” he
was buried in the crypt of St. Paul’s, and so, half a century later, was
Wellington. But a mile to the eastward there is a burial place of far
more curious interest to the student of English history. It is in the
grounds of that gloomy aggregation of buildings, the Tower of London,
the fortress, prison, and palace, which dates back to the Norman
Conquest. In point of historic reminiscence there is not a more
interesting, certainly not a sadder spot than the Chapel of St. Peter in
the Tower. Here rest the distinguished victims of the remorseless
axe,—Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More,
Essex, Somerset, Northumberland, and all the rest of noble martyrs who
were beheaded near the Beauchamp Tower, a few yards from where their
remains have mouldered to dust. Macaulay says of this burial place:
“Death is there associated, not as in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s,
with genius and virtue, with public veneration and with imperishable
renown; not, as in our humblest churches and church-yards, with
everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities, but
with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the
savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the
ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen
greatness and of blighted fame.”
_The Loved and Lost_
“The loved and lost!” why do we call them lost?
Because we miss them from our outward road,
God’s unseen angel o’er our pathway crost
Looked on us all, and loving them the most,
Straightway relieved them from life’s weary load.
They are not lost; they are within the door
That shuts out loss and every hurtful thing—
With angels bright, and loved ones gone before,
In their Redeemer’s presence evermore,
And God himself their Lord, and Judge, and King.
And this we call a loss! O selfish sorrow
Of selfish hearts! O we of little faith!
Let us look round, some argument to borrow,
Why we in patience should await the morrow,
That surely must succeed the night of death.
Aye, look upon this dreary, desert path,
The thorns and thistles wheresoe’r we turn;
What trials and what tears, what wrongs and wrath,
What struggles and what strife the journey hath!
They have escaped from these; and lo! we mourn.
Ask the poor sailor, when the wreck is done,
Who, with his treasure, strove the shore to reach,
While with the raging waves he battled on,
Was it not joy, where every joy seemed gone,
To see his loved ones landed on the beach?
A poor wayfarer, leading by the hand
A little child, had halted by the well
To wash from off her feet the clinging sand,
And tell the tired boy of that bright land
Where, this long journey past, they longed to dwell,
When lo! the Lord, who many mansions had,
Drew near and looked upon the suffering twain,
Then pitying, spake, “Give me the little lad;
In strength renewed, and glorious beauty clad,
I’ll bring him with me when I come again.”
Did she make answer selfishly and wrong—
“Nay, but the woes I feel he too must share!”
Or, rather bursting into grateful song,
She went her way rejoicing and made strong
To struggle on, since he was freed from care.
We will do likewise. Death hath made no breach
In love and sympathy, in hope and trust;
No outward sigh or sound our ears can reach,
But there’s an inward, spiritual speech,
That greets us still, though mortal tongues be dust.
It bids us do the work that they laid down—
Take up the song where they broke off the strain;
So journeying till we reach the heavenly town,
Where are laid up our treasures and our crown,
And our lost, loved ones will be found again.
_At Last_
When on my day of life the night is falling,
And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,
I hear far voices out of darkness calling
My feet to paths unknown.
Thou who hast made my home of life so pleasant,
Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;
O love divine, O helper ever present,
Be thou my strength and stay!
Be near me when all else is from me drifting,
Earth, sky, home’s picture, days of shade and shine,
And kindly faces to my own uplifting
The love which answers mine.
I have but Thee, O Father! Let Thy Spirit
Be with me then to comfort and uphold;
No gate of pearl, no branch of palm, I merit,
Nor street of shining gold.
Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckoned,
And both forgiven through Thy abounding grace—
I find myself by hands familiar beckoned
Unto my fitting place;
Some humble door among Thy many mansions,
Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,
And flows fore’er through heaven’s green expansions
The river of Thy peace.
There from the music round about me stealing,
I fain would learn the new and holy song,
And find, at last, beneath Thy trees of healing,
The life for which I long.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
_Auld Lang Syne_
Under this title, though sometimes called a “hymn of comfort,” Rev. John
W. Chadwick wrote the following lines for the twenty-fifth anniversary
of his church:
It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all—
A song of those who answer not,
Forever we may call;
They throng the silence of the breast,
We see them as of yore—
The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet
Who walk with us no more.
’Tis hard to take the burden up
When these have laid it down;
They brightened all the joy of life,
They softened every frown;
But oh, ’tis good to think of them,
When we are troubled sore!
Thanks be to God that such have been,
Although they are no more!
More homelike seems the vast unknown,
Since they have entered there;
To follow them were not so hard,
Wherever they may fare;
They cannot be where God is not,
On any sea or shore;
Whate’er betides, Thy love abides,
Our God, for evermore.
_In a Rose Garden_
Under the above title, John Bennett, of Charleston, S. C., wrote the
following verses:
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We will not care at all;
It will not matter then a whit,
The honey or the gall.
The Summer days that we have known
Will all forgotten be and flown;
The garden will be overgrown
Where now the roses fall.
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We will not mind the pain;
The throbbing, crimson tide of life
Will not have left a stain.
The song we sing together, dear,
The dream we dream together here,
Will mean no more than means a tear
Amid a Summer rain.
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
The grief will all be o’er;
The sea of care will surge in vain
Upon a careless shore.
These glasses we turn down to-day,
Here at the parting of the way,
We shall be wineless then as they,
And will not mind it more.
A hundred years from now, dear heart,
We’ll neither know nor care
What came of all life’s bitterness,
Or followed love’s despair.
Then fill the glasses up again,
And kiss me through the rose-leaf rain;
We’ll build one castle more in Spain
And dream one more dream there.
“_Now I Lay Me_”
The Mothers’ Club, which is revolutionizing the training of children,
wants a revision of the child’s evening prayer which is in universal
use. A grandmother relates a newly-awakened experience upon the occasion
of a visit to her daughter. On the night after her arrival, the little
five-year-old grandson insisted that his grandmother should put him to
bed. When he was ready to be tucked in, he repeated the Lord’s Prayer,
but when asked to follow it with “Now I lay me down to sleep,” she found
that he had never learned it. On asking her daughter why, the child’s
mother replied: “Why, mother dear, that belongs to the past, like
teaching children to kneel, and many other things. Do we want our
children to kneel when they ask us for anything? The Mothers’ Club has
taught us that ‘Now I lay me’ is highly objectionable, with the
suggestion in the line, ‘if I should die before I wake.’ How cruel to
implant such a thought in the child’s mind! I remember too well the long
hours I have lain awake lest I should die in my sleep. The model parent
of to-day has advanced beyond the convictions of the model parent of
yesterday, when to impress upon a child a fear of death and to keep in
his remembrance that he must surely die was the duty of every good
father and mother.
“Think of the funerals children were made to attend when you were a
child—the funeral selections of the old-school readers, the horrible
gloom that fell upon a home whenever death crossed the threshold, the
clocks stopped, the pictures covered, or turned to the wall, and all the
rest. Perhaps the fulfilment of the promise ‘There shall be no more
death,’ is nearer than many suppose; for what is death when robbed of
the fear of it—that fear which has been a positive cult for centuries?
I, for one, believe that the blessed day is coming when to die will be
simply passing on, and, outside of the circle of the dear ones of the
departed, it will be almost ‘without observation.’ Certainly there will
be a welcome absence of funeral pageants, the complete annihilation of
the ashes after cremation, doing away in time with sepulchral urns and
chapels for their preservation. Memorial monuments will then be in some
form contributing to the world’s betterment. The wearing of mourning
will be a thing of the past, and that blemish on many a fair rural
landscape, the neglected old graveyard, will have disappeared. Funeral
processions will no more go about the streets.”
When the old-fashioned grandmother recovered somewhat from her amazement
at such a line of argument, she ventured to suggest a revision to avoid
the condemnation of the Mothers’ Club. So now the little fellow is
saying:
Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep;
When in the morning light I wake,
Lead Thou my feet, that I may take
The path of love for Thy dear sake.
A call in the New York _Evening Post_ for a Child’s Morning Prayer
brought several responses, among which are the following: