FIG. 50.--AT WOOLWICH.

"To Lieut. Thomas Sanders, late of the Royal
Regiment of Artillery, who died March
1760, aged 60 (?) years."

There is a more recent case in which the same idea is pourtrayed in
somewhat different fashion on a headstone in the obsolete graveyard of
St. Oswald, near the Barracks at York. It is dedicated to John Kay,
a private in the Royal Scots Greys, who died July 9, 1833, aged 34
years.

But, on the whole, it may be accepted as an axiom that originality has
shunned the town churchyards, and the absence of curious varieties
of the gravestone among the well-sown acres of Bunhill Fields and
such-like places of the period at which they were by comparison so
abundant in less considered localities admits of a simple explanation.

In the eighteenth century town and country were much more divided than
they are now. London and the rural districts were not on their present
level. Taste in art and in the ordinary affairs of life was being
cultivated in town; it was not even encouraged in the country.
Education and refinement were not thought to be desirable
accomplishments in a rustic population, but dwellers in cities had
been for generations improving their manners, and thus it was that no
such provincial vulgarity as a decorated tombstone could be tolerated
in the choice metropolis.

The clergy were always the masters in such matters, and their
influence is seen in many places, even in the villages, in keeping