This book, then, is not a treatise, but simply a first collection of
churchyard curiosities, the greater number of which have been gathered
within a comparatively small radius. It is only the hoard of one
collector and the contents of one sketch-book, all gleaned in about
a hundred parishes. Many collectors may multiply by thousands these
results, bring out fresh features, and possibly points of high
importance.

Two chief purposes therefore animate my desire to publish this work.
One is to supply such little information as I have gleaned on a
subject which has by some singular chance escaped especial recognition
from all the multitude of authors, antiquarians, and literary men.
I have searched the Museum libraries, and consulted book-collectors,
well-read archaeologists, and others likely to know if there is any
work descriptive of old gravestones in existence, and nothing with
the remotest relation thereto can I discover.[1] There are, of course,
hundreds of books of epitaphs, more or less apocryphal, but not
one book, apocryphal or otherwise, regarding the allegories of the
churchyard. Can it be that the subject is bereft of interest? If so, I
have made my venture in vain. But I trust that it is not so.

[Footnote 1: The Rev. Charles Boutell published, in 1849, parts 1 and
2 of a periodical work entitled "Christian Monuments in England and
Wales," proposing to complete the same in five sections; the fifth to
treat of headstones and other churchyard memorials, with some general
observations on modern monuments. The two parts brought the
subject down to the fifteenth century, and were so ably written and
beautifully illustrated as to intensify our regret at the incompletion
of the task.]