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Of the so-called black tombstones I have seen none other than slate. In a short tour through Wales, in 1898, I found very few old headstones. Most of the memorials in the churchyards were constructed of slate, which abundant material is devoted to every conceivable purpose.
No one can open the book of The Sculptured Stones without being almost overwhelmed with astonishment at the reflection that they are not monuments excavated in Egypt, or Syria, or Mexico, but have stood before the light of day in village churchyards, or in marketplaces, or by waysides throughout our own country.
Denys in truth was at work again in peace at the cloister, upon his house of reeds and pipes. At times his fits came upon him again; and when they came, for his cure he would dig eagerly, turned sexton now, digging, by choice, graves for the dead in the various churchyards of the town.
The envoys, with their predecessors, had wasted eight months of most precious time; they had heard and made orations, they had read and written protocols, they had witnessed banquets, masquerades, and revels of stupendous frivolity, in honour of the English Garter, brought solemnly to the Valois by Lord Derby, accompanied by one hundred gentlemen "marvellously, sumptuously, and richly accoutred," during that dreadful winter when the inhabitants of Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin to save which splendid cities and to annex them to France, was a main object of the solemn embassy from the Netherlands were eating rats, and cats, and dogs, and the weeds from the pavements, and the grass from the churchyards; and were finding themselves more closely pressed than ever by the relentless genius of Farnese; and in exchange for all these losses and all this humiliation, the ambassadors now returned to their constituents, bringing an account of Chiverny's magnificent banquets and long orations, of the smiles of Henry III., the tears of Catharine de' Medici, the regrets of M. des Pruneaux, besides sixteen gold chains, each weighing twenty-one ounces and two grains.
They had matched each other in number since the French admiral had exiled the British missionary-consul, and compelled the queen to erect a papal church for every bethel. Along the road and in the churchyards the preachers and deacons were in black cloth, sweating as they walked, their faces beatudinized as in America.
Several such are to be seen in German churchyards long since converted to purposes of recreation, and one at Heidelberg may be taken as an example. To "Barbara Fosterii," died 1745, aged 67. Beneath is the text from the First Epistle of Peter, chapter i. verses 24 and 25. "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass.
He has a thought, a pity, for those things that once were men and women, lying, with their six feet of earth upon them, in our English Churchyards, so horribly still, while the mask of their sorrow yields to the yet more terrible grin of our mortality's last jest. And to the last he is like all children the lover of Players.
The churchyards of the parochial churches were to be opened for the burial of their dead, but the funerals were to be unaccompanied with exhortation, or any public demonstration which might excite disturbance. The adherents of one religion were forbidden to disturb, to insult, or in any way to interfere with the: solemnities of the other.
I should not be surprised to hear some sanitary lecturer say, that the fear of churchyards was a sort of instinct implanted in the mind, to prevent ignorant people and children from going near such unwholesome places. It would be comparatively well if the mischief done us by Science, Medicine and Chemistry, and all that sort of thing stopped here.
Nightshades border on the potato, the flowers of both almost exactly alike; poison and food growing side by side and of the same species. There are tales still told in the villages of this deadly and enchanted mandragora; the lads sometimes go to the churchyards to search for it. Plantains and docks, wild spurge, hops climbing up a dead fir tree, a well-chosen pole for them nothing is omitted.
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