FIG. 49.--AT BUNHILL FIELDS, LONDON.

"To Elizabeth Sharp, who died Oct. 20, 1752,
aged 31 years."

It is easy to read in this illustration the parable of death
destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant. It
is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary
instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of
gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City
Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical,
but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of
novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which
have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may
have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work
of the kind under consideration. But Bunhill Fields and similar places
in and near London and other great towns have taught me the law to
which I have already referred--the law that the picture-tombstone was
country bred, and could never have endured under the modern conditions
of life in or near the centres of civilization.

There are exceptions, perhaps many, to this ruling, as there are
exceptions to every other. For instance, a stone at the grave of a
Royal Artillery Officer in Woolwich Churchyard combines the emblems
of his earthly calling with those of his celestial aspirations in
a medley arrangement not unusual in rural scenes, but hardly to be
reconciled with the education and refinement of a large garrison and
school of military science which Woolwich was in 1760. This must be
set down as one of the exceptions which prove the rule.