to render neat, pretty, and pleasant to look upon, that which has
oftentimes an unpleasing, desolate, and painful aspect. A few sheep
occasionally (or better still, the scythe and shears now and then
employed), with a trifling attention to the walks, once properly
formed and gravelled, will suffice, when the fences are duly kept,
to make any churchyard seemly and neat: a little more than this
will make it ornamental and instructive.

It is possible that many persons might feel that flower-beds and
shrubberies are not what they would wish to see in a churchyard;
they might think they gave too garden-like and adorned a look to
so solemn and sacred a spot; persons will not all think alike on
such a matter: and yet something may be done in this direction with
an effect which would please everybody. A few trees of the arbor
vitae, the cypress, and the Irish yew, scattered here and there, with
tirs in the hedge-rows or boundary fences, would be unobjectionable;
while wooden baskets, or boxes, placed by the sides of the walks,
and filled in summer with the fuchsia or scarlet geranium, would give
our churchyards an exceedingly pretty, and perhaps not unsuitable
appearance. Little clumps of snowdrops and primroses might also
be planted here and there; for flowers may fitly spring up, bloom,
and fade away, in a spot which so impressively tells us of death
and resurrection: and where sheep even are never admitted, all
these methods for beautifying a churchyard may be adopted. Shrubs
and flowers on and near the graves, as is so universal in Wales;
independently of their pretty effect, show a kindly feeling for the
memory of those whose bodies rest beneath them; and how far to be
preferred to those enormous and frightful masses of brick or stone
which the country mason has, alas, so plentifully supplied!