ghastly to be beautiful. This one, the Richmond example, and the two
at Ripley constitute my entire experience of full relief work on a
mere gravestone.

FIG. 75.--AT WANSTEAD.

"To William Swan, died 1715, aged 16 years."

Other churchyards in the locality we found less fruitful, and taking
rail to Buckhurst Hill, we struck across Epping Forest to Chingford,
also without profit, and walked on to Walthamstow, where another of
the enfoliated death's-head pictures was found; the novelty being two
skulls with ivy sprays, symbolical of evergreen recollections.

FIG. 76.--AT WALTHAMSTOW.

"To Jane Redfern, died 1734, aged 52 years,"

In the Broxbourne example on the same Plate (Fig. 77) branches of oak,
bearing leaves and acorns, are used with good decorative effect on
either side of a porch in which is seated a mourning figure, but I
cannot undertake to explain the symbolical significance of the oak in
sepulchral masonry.

FIG. 77.--AT BROXBOURNE.

"To Mrs Rowe, widow, died 6 May 1798."

My excursions into Essex have been too limited in scope to trace or
test peculiarities in that county, but I have found by observation in