horrors, the figures rising headless from the grave, and
all the traditional ingenuities in which it pleased our
fathers to set forth their sorrow for the dead and their
sense of earthly mutability. But it is not a hearty sort
of mirth. Each ornament may have been executed by the
merriest apprentice, whistling as he plied the mallet;
but the original meaning of each, and the combined effect
of so many of them in this quiet enclosure, is serious to
the point of melancholy.

Round a great part of the circuit, houses of a low
class present their backs to the churchyard. Only a few
inches separate the living from the dead. Here, a window
is partly blocked up by the pediment of a tomb; there,
where the street falls far below the level of the graves,
a chimney has been trained up the back of a monument, and
a red pot looks vulgarly over from behind. A damp smell
of the graveyard finds its way into houses where workmen
sit at meat. Domestic life on a small scale goes forward
visibly at the windows. The very solitude and stillness
of the enclosure, which lies apart from the town's
traffic, serves to accentuate the contrast. As you walk
upon the graves, you see children scattering crumbs to
feed the sparrows; you hear people singing or washing
dishes, or the sound of tears and castigation; the linen
on a clothes-pole flaps against funereal sculpture; or
perhaps the cat slips over the lintel and descends on a
memorial urn. And as there is nothing else astir, these
incongruous sights and noises take hold on the attention
and exaggerate the sadness of the place.