Although there may be no expectation of discovering the germ of
the pictorial or allegorical gravestone, a section of the samples
collected for this essay may be displayed to shew the earlier forms
in which the ruder class of masons prepared their sculptured monuments
for the churchyard. There is little doubt that the practice originated
in an endeavour to imitate on the common gravestone the nobler
memorials of the churches and cathedrals, the effort being more or
less successful in proportion to the individual skill of the artist.
The influence of locality, however, must always be a factor in this
consideration; for, as a rule, it will be found that the poorest
examples come from essentially secluded places, while localities of
earlier enlightenment furnish really admirable work of much prior
date. Take, for instance, that most frequent emblem, the skull. I have
not sought for the model by which the village sculptor worked, but
I have in my note-book this sketch of a skull, copied from a
sixteenth-century tomb at Frankfort on the Maine, and there are
doubtless a vast number equal to it in English cathedrals and churches
of the same period.

FIG. 9.--AT FRANKFORT, GERMANY.

Regarding this as our ideal, the primitive work which we find in rural
localities must be pronounced degenerated art. Generally speaking we
may assume that the carver of the stately tomb within the church had
no hand in the execution of the outer gravestone; but that quite early
there were able masons employed upon the decoration of the churchyard
headstone is shewn in many instances, of which the one presented in
Fig. 10 may serve as a very early specimen.

FIG. 10.--AT EAST WICKHAM.