Grave monument

“ Around the monument, which has been destroyed, were niches containing marble statues of the twelve peers of France; to the right, the lay peers in royal robes and with crowns upon their heads, bearing the insignia of royalty; to the left, the ecclesiastical peers with the sacred symbols.
We have already stated that, to prevent the churches from being overcrowded with tombs, stone or marble tablets—they were of painted wood sometimes—were fixed upon the wall just above, or not far from, the grave, with an epitaph and sculptural ornaments. ”

“ But, whenever art is introduced in either the shrine or the monument, they should be left separate. For, again, the place of his repose is often selected by the individual himself, or by those who loved him, under the influence of feelings altogether unconnected with the rushing glory of his past existence. The grave must always have a home feeling about its peace ”

“ Finally, the monument is covered by a roof artistically constructed. For the tombs of kings and the greatest chiefs they go to distant islands to find huge stones to crown the grave. I have seen one twenty-four feet long by eight broad and at least eighteen inches thick. [Pg 114] One of these tombs was built by the natives of Wallis Island, who brought the enormous blocks in immense canoes. It is wonderful for these peoples. ”

“ Sometimes within a stately mausoleum reposed in solitary magnificence the dust of a single individual, who in sullen exclusiveness declares in his epitaph that he has no associate even in the grave, or that he made his tomb for himself alone—IN HOC MONVMENTO SOCIVM HABEO NVLLVM, or, HOC SOLO SIBI FECIT.
The violation of the monument is earnestly deprecated in numerous inscriptions in some such terms as these: ROGO PER DEOS SVPEROS INFEROSQVE NE VELITIS OSSA MEA VIOLARE—“I beseech you, by the supernal and infernal gods, that you do not violate my bones.” ”

“ Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown, Some rogue to reputation all unknown— Men's backs being turned—should lift his thieving hand, Efface your name and substitute his own. Whose then would be the monument? To whom Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom, Your very name forgotten—ah, my friend, The name is all that's rescued by the tomb. For memory of worth and work we go To other records than a stone can show. These lacking, naught remains; with these The stone is needless for the world will know. Then build your mausoleum if you must, And creep into it with a perfect trust ”

“ Their efforts at restoration are only the very graves of graves. In some places a side path leading off the main road to a tomb has been uncovered, paved with the original lava-blocks as fresh as when the last mourner retired from it, casting "a lingering look behind;" but it leads now only to a shapeless heap of brick, or to the empty site of a monument that has been razed to the very foundations.
One piece of marble sculpture especially arrests the eye, and awakens a chord of feeling in the most callous heart. ”

“ For this city of mute and closed churches, where imperishable mosaics glisten in the awful damp, and beautiful pillars of most precious marbles gleam through a humid mist, of mausoleums empty but indestructible, of tottering campanili, of sumptuous splendour and incredible decay, is the sepulchre of the great civilisation which Christianity failed to save alive, but to which we owe everything and out of which we are come; the only monument that remains to us of those confused and half barbaric centuries which lie between Antiquity and the Middle Age. ”

“ To complete the picture, the whole is backed up by a venerable-looking church, with a low, tile-covered steeple and roof, plain enough but for a beautiful marble monument placed above the doorway. It is difficult to imagine anything more enchanting in the way of architecture than this extraordinary cemetery, filling up the centre of one of the small squares of the city. ”

“ Here, those sanguine, half-childish dreams of buried treasure discovered in dead men's graves, which seem to have a charm for every one, are more than fulfilled in the spectacle of those antique kings, lying in the splendour of their crowns and breastplates of embossed plate of gold; their swords, studded with golden imagery, at their sides, as in some feudal monument; their very faces covered up most strangely in golden masks. The very floor of one tomb, we read, was thick with gold- dust—the heavy gilding fallen from some perished kingly vestment ”

“ But you will have, whether in your obscure and unvisited graves or in your great mausoleums, a richer and a more imperishable monument; a monument which neither time nor war nor malice can ever destroy. The stories of your heroic lives and noble deaths can no more perish than the ocean that laps our shores. ”

“ In long marble galleries, open to the air and the sun, the monuments at first give the cemetery the appearance of an art exhibition. You fancy you have wandered into a sculpture gallery by mistake; but the wreaths of flowers with broad silk sashes attached, the swinging lamps, and the memorial tablets undeceive you.{158} Each monument has, as it were, an arch of the gallery to itself, and is placed against the back wall. The figures are rarely allegorical. A man in his habit as he lived stands life-size in white marble above his own tomb. ”

“ The monument speaks for itself— simple in form, admirable in proportions, composed of enduring marble and granite, resting upon foundations broad and deep, it rises into the skies higher than any work of human art. ”

“ The selection of a proper site for their tomb is a matter of profound solicitude, time, and money; for the geomancers must be consulted with a fee. The tombs of the poor consist only of a grave and a low mound of earth. With the richer class monuments are of stone, sometimes neat or even imposing, sometimes grotesque. ”

“ If virtues bore monuments one would rise over the neglected grave of that saintly woman that would reach the clouds, and that other grave would be stripped of its marble and left to oblivion.
Though a cemetery is more or less a museum of vanity and pride, there is at the bottom of the costly display of granite and marble a tender feeling, a commendable virtue. There may be as much love and respect for those in unmarked graves as for those who sleep in costly masonry or beneath sculptured stone. ”

“ Within these mounds we must look for the only authentic remains of their builders. They are the principal depositories of ancient art; they cover the bones of the distinguished dead of remote ages; and hide from the profane gaze of invading races the altars of the ancient people.
A simple heap of earth or stones seems to have been the first monument which suggested itself to man; the pyramid, the arch, and the obelisk are evidences of a more advanced state. ”

“ Many marble tombs were also destroyed, some canopied, some resting upon columns, others recumbent, the fragments of which were built up into a pedestal for a figure of Liberty in the Place d'armes opposite the church, a barbarous proceeding, surely; but forget not that the slabs and broken tombs in our old burial grounds are treated much in the same fashion, and piled up into pyramids to ornament the gardens. The transportation of what was saved from the wreck to Paris was no mean work. Think of the huge monument of François I., and about eighty statues! ”

“ When it is said that the tomb is a single piece of granite, half-polished, and without cement, all that is remarkable in this strange monument, which exhibits such rigid simplicity in the midst of the utmost magnificence of human power, will have been described. The only broken part is an attempt at a search at one of the angles, and two small holes nearly round and breast high. Such is the interior of this immense edifice, in which the work of the hand of man appears to rival the gigantic forms of nature. ”

“ The head-stone, reared by the hand of pious affection, instead of pointing to the remains it was erected to commemorate, stands over the graves of strangers, and we shed our tears over those whom we never knew; while the sexton and the grave-digger grin at us behind the neighbouring tomb-stones, chinking the silver in their pockets, and laughing to think that the paupers whom they shoved into “our” grave on the previous night in a “huggermugger” way should be wept over by the broken-hearted mourner whom they have thus cheated. ”

“ The monument has been so defaced and mutilated by relic hunters that it is ruined. One person has had the unspeakable cheek to daub his sprawling initials with a paint brush all over the tomb, earning for himself a reputation that no one envies. ”

“ And under these higher tombs there is a medley of smaller grave stones, some of them much inclined to the ground, others completely turned over and lying flat, the higher monuments are not unlike venerable forms of olden patriarchs, beaten down and praying over grass-grown graves of thousands and thousands of men, long forgotten amongst their own people. ”

“ There is stone upon stone, tomb upon tomb, monument upon monument, and between them wherever you turn your eye, syringa-trees and bushes. From among broken rocks, from dark corners of tombs and sarcophagi, from the hollows of decayed stones, stems, sometimes winding like serpents, make their way out into space and spread into thick bushy crowns, which form a wealth of green and shady arcades of branches descending from above to the rotten tombstones, and to the damp clay of the ground which is overgrown by a monotonous sickly yellowish green. ”

“ The front represents a death's head. The top is sculptured, and contains grooves, perhaps for the passage of the blood of victims, animal or human, offered in sacrifice. The trees in the engraving give an idea of the forest in which these monuments are buried.
At the distance of 120 feet north is the monument marked O, No. 24, which, unhappily, is fallen and broken. In sculpture it is the same with the beautiful half-buried monument before given, and, I repeat it, in workmanship equal to the best remains of Egyptian art. ”

“ Nothing could well be conceived more dreary, solemn, and sepulchral than that holy place: its distained and time-hallowed walls; the impenetrable mass of darkness that gathered into those recesses which the moonlight failed to reach; its antique and massive tombs, above which reclined the sculptured effigies of some departed patroness or abbess, who had exchanged a living grave for the Mansions of the Blest. ”

“ A Walk Through A Cemetery In walking through a country graveyard one sees a prominent granite or marble monument here and there, but more of the stones that mark the resting-places of the dead are modest in appearance, plain and humble. ”

“ Answer.—The National cemeteries consecrated to the remains of the fallen patriots of the late civil war are all well cared for by salaried superintendents, and are examined from time to time by competent inspectors, whose duties require them to report any neglect. Every grave is marked with a headstone; the grounds are handsomely laid out; the walks, winding among the green swarded lots, are neatly graveled; and shade trees, ornamental shrubs and flower beds are tastefully arranged to beautify these “God’s acres,” sacred to the Nation’s dead. ”

“ At times a stone would detach itself in the topmost tier of the ancient monument, and, rolling down from story to story, cause cries of terror and much crowding among the people below, as if the whole edifice were about to crumble ”

“ It is not asserted that all our ancient stone monuments are of this character, but some, at least, of those which are claimed as “temples,” were primarily graves; hence they come under our survey. Here, too, it seems fitting to notice another matter, dependent to some extent on the orientation of graves, and illustrative of the persistency of unconscious folk-memory.
The modern sexton, having filled up the grave, banks up the surplus soil in the form of a long, neatly-finished mound. ”

“ Within this second enclosure, is the Most Holy Cemetery itself, a plot of about two acres, shaded like the others by fine old cedars and cypresses. Here are only three graves, marked by huge mounds under which lie the dust of Confucius, his son and his grandson. That of the Sage, we estimated to be twenty-five feet high and 250 feet in circumference. In front of it is a stone monument about fifteen feet high, four feet wide and sixteen inches thick. Lying prone before that is another stone of nearly the same size supported by a heavy stone pedestal. ”

“ As there are none of those tasteless modern monuments which deform English churches, and the grave is marked only by a mound of earth, or at most a flat stone, the touching picture of human frailty is enhanced, not impaired, by this custom. ”

“ The marble of the monument, the sculpture, and decorations of the crypt, chapel, &c., cost one million eight hundred thousand dollars in gold—a costly mausoleum.
The interior of the Invalides is circular, with arms of a cross extended north, south, east, and west. The great dome is a splendid piece of architecture, the summit of which is over three hundred feet from the pavement; and high up in the cupola we see a splendid picture representing our Saviour surrounded by saints and angels, which must be colossal in size to appear as they do of life-size from below. ”

“ At frequent intervals along the roadside, up rises the ruin of an ancient tomb. As they stand now, these structures are immensely high, and broken mounds of conglomerated brick, stone, pebbles, and earth, all molten by time into a mass as solid and indestructible as if each tomb were composed of a single boulder of granite. When first erected, they were cased externally, no doubt, with slabs of polished marble, artfully wrought, bas-reliefs, and all such suitable adornments, and were rendered majestically beautiful by grand architectural designs. ”