gravestone is the grave! They will shew you the old fellows slowly
descending into the ground, and they have heard the parson say
perhaps that the "trembling of the earth" will in time shake them all
inevitably out of sight. I have heard it mentioned as an article of
belief among sextons that a hundred years is the fair measure of a
head-stone's "life" above ground, but this reckoning is much too short
for the evidences, and makes no allowance for variable circumstances.
In some places, Keston for instance, the church is founded upon a bed
of chalk, and out of the chalk the graves are laboriously hewn. It is
obvious therefore that the nature of the soil, as it is yielding or
impervious, must be a prime factor in the question of survival. It
may be granted, however, that our progenitors in selecting their
burial-grounds had the same preference for a suitable site as we have
in our own day, and, notwithstanding exceptions which seem to shew
that the church and not the churchyard was the one thing thought of,
the law of a light soil for interments is sufficiently regular to give
us an average duration of a gravestone's natural existence. The term
"natural" will apply neither to those fortunate ones whose lives are
studiously prolonged, nor of course to the majority whose career is
wilfully, negligently, or accidentally shortened. But that, under
ordinary circumstances, the stones gradually sink out of sight, and
at a certain rate of progression, is beyond a doubt. Two illustrations
may help the realization of this fact, such as may be seen in hundreds
of our churchyards.

[Illustration: FIG. 80. BETHNAL GREEN.

Illustration: FIG. 81. PLUMSTEAD.

SINKING GRAVESTONES.]