"Sacred to the Memory" of the dead, is a pious trust which demands
our respect and protection, at least so long as it is capable
of proclaiming its mission. When it has got past service and its
testimony has been utterly effaced by time, it is not so easy to
find arguments for its preservation. There is no sense or utility in
exhibiting a blank tablet, and I have seen without scruple or remorse
such superannuated vestiges employed in repairing the church fabric.
But this, be it understood, is only when the stone is irretrievably
beyond _memento mori_ service, and on the clear condition that it is
employed in the furtherance of religious work. It is true that a stone
is only a stone, whatever it may have been used for, but a peculiar
sanctity is in most minds associated with the grave, and we ought not
to run the risk of shocking tender-hearted people by degrading even
the dead memorial of the dead to profane and secular purposes. And
yet, what has become in too many cases of the old gravestones?
The very old ones we may perhaps account for, but where are the
middle-aged ones of the eighteenth century? It cannot be doubted,
alas, that they have in many churchyards been deliberately taken away
and destroyed to make room for new ones. Districts comprising many
parishes may be pointed out with all their old churches in the midst
of their old churchyards, but without one old gravestone standing.
The rule and practice have been to quietly remove the relics of the
forgotten sires in order to dig new graves for a new generation. The
habit, as just said, rules by districts, and this is the case in most
matters connected with the subject of this essay. It is a general and
remarkable truth that "good" and "bad" churchyards abound in groups.
The force of example or the instinct of imitation may explain the
fact, but it affords a sad reflection upon the morality of the
burial-place. Kirke White asks: