LETTER XIV.

Père la Chaise.—Funeral of Bellini.—Grave-Merchants. Description of the Cemetery.—Graves of the Rich and the Poor.—The Fête des Morts.—Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.—Remarkable personages buried there.—The Aristocracy of the Grave.—Monument of Foy.—Inscription.—Grave yards in Cities and Towns.—French regulations for the inhumation of the dead.

Paris, October 29th, 1835.

I tookadvantage of a beautiful day, which peeped out yesterday, to pay my respects toPère la Chaise, and I am going to give you some account of this celebrated city of the dead. But what can I say? I feel scarce wit enough to talk about the weather, and I am going to tell you of that which all the world has described so beautifully. I know not the reason, but I have even less sense and imagination than usual, since I am in Paris. If it were not for Madame de Sevigné, and a fewother such characters, I would lay the blame upon the heavy, unthinking and hazy influences of these northern climates. I followed the funeral ofBellini, the composer, author of Pirati, Puritani, and other first-rate operas. Is it not a pity to die with so much talent at twenty-nine, when so many fools live out their four-score? I do not recollect any thing that old Methusaleh said or did, with his nine hundred years; and he could not have made such an opera as Puritani, if he had lived as many more. He was accompanied (Bellini, I mean) by the music of all Paris; and the music of the spheres must have played, this day, a sweeter harmony.

The mass of Cherubini, so appropriate to the occasion, and so much better than the archbishop’s prayers, was forbidden by the archbishop, because it had feminine voices in it; and his worship would not have the chapel of the Invalids, all hung over so beautifully with bloody flags, profaned by musical women; not even by the exquisite Grisi. So we had the 39th Psalm. Don’t you think the spirit of the composer must have winced? But the march, with full band, along the Boulevards for several miles, and the end of the ceremonyat Père la Chaise, were imposing. Speeches were pronounced in Italian and French by good orators; and, among the listeners, some of us were queens and princesses. The breezes whispered though the pines, and a thunder storm, as if expressly, came over the sun, and played bass in the clouds, and the clouds themselves wept as the grave closed upon Bellini.—I went to the Invalids, with a pretty English woman, one of his scholars, who wailed his loss inconsolably, and who, for certain, was in love with him. Women, you know, always fall in love with their music masters; Mary Queen of Scots, and the pretty Mrs. Thrale into the bargain.

This cemetery of Père la Chaise, thirty years ago, had fourteen tombs; it counts, in the present year, fifty thousand. Hundreds of architects, and sculptors, and statuaries, besides multitudes of labourers, find here a new source of occupation, and improvement in the arts; so that a goodly part of the present generation gets its living by the death of its predecessors. Here is a whole street of marble yards, which manufactures tombs for domestic and foreign commerce, near a mile long; and mighty heaps of bronze, granite and marble, exquisitely chiselled, recommending themselves to the noticeof the public. Tombstones, urns, bronze gates, iron railings, crosses, pillars, pyramids, statues and all the furniture of the grave, are laid out, and exhibited here, as the merchandise of the shops and bazaars of the latest and newest fashions—“Grand Magazin à la General Foy—à l’Abelard et Heloise,” &c.; as in the city, “Grand Magazin du Doge de Venise,” and by trying to under-bury one another, they have reduced funeral expenses in every branch to their minimum;—there is, perhaps, no place in the world where one can die, and be buried so moderately, as in Paris. Here is one selling out at first cost, to close a concern; and another’s whole stock of tombs is brought to the hammer, by the death of the proprietor.

These grave-merchants used to follow the funeral processions, in swarms, to the verge of the tomb, offering to the mourners bills and advertisements, and specimens of their industry, but this emulation has been lately forbidden, by an order of police. These people have got, by professional habit, to think, like the philosophers, that the principal business of man, upon this earth, is to die. The staple of conversation is, the grave; and there is as much pedantry here about the dead people, as in theLatin Quarter there is about the dead languages.—“When do you think you can pay me that bill of marble, M. Grigou?”—“Ah, sir! business is very slack just now; and the season, you see, is almost over. M. Barbeau, I have been twenty years in the trade, and never saw such times. It really seems as if people had left off dying. But, if business becomes brisk, as we expect, towards Christmas, I will pay you off then; if not, you will have to wait till next August.—— When the cholera was here—— Helas! I fear we shall never see such times again.”—“Eh bien, patience, M. Grigou, we must hope for the best.”

They have here, too, a kind of Exchange, where they meet to see the state of the market—to see the newest fashions or inventions of urns and crosses, and other sepulchral images, and to read over the bills of mortality, as elsewhere one reads the price current. The joy of a death is, of course, proportionate to the worth, fashion and distinction of the individual who has died. When General Mortier was killed, on the 28th, stock rose one and a quarter.—“Well! what is there to-day?”—“Nothing!—and getting worse and worse!—but what can one expect else under such a detestable government? You remember how it was under the Restoration. Then we had such persons as Marshal Suchet, and Madame Demidoff to bury; now we bury nothing but the canaille. Even under Charles, we had some few nobles left, who could pay for a snug mausoleum; but what is a French nobleman now?—a poor, half-cut gentleman, with a ribbon in his button-hole, which he calls a decoration, and without money to pay the grave digger or the sexton.—— Ah! M. Grigou, things must have a change!”

The gate of the cemetery, which terminates the view at the end of this street, is surmounted by statuary, and is magnificent, like that of some great prince. It is always besieged by equipages, and vehicles of every kind, of the visiters, who are coming and going at all hours—all except one—his equipage goes home empty! Around this entrance is a great crowd of women, all over smiles, who offer you wreaths, chaplets, and crosses of orange blossom, amaranth, and other ever-green, very prettily interwoven, and they get a living by this little trade. As you ascend the hill, you see groups of visiters, noisy and talkative, who on entering are suddenly silent, struck with the awfulnessof the place. A kind of death-chill runs through the blood. But after a closer view the mind becomes serene, and even roams with a delightful curiosity amongst the tombs.

Nearly all the ground is covered with small pines, and with fern, woodbines, and jessamines twisted into tufted thickets. There is quite a deficiency of cypress and willow, and hemlock; the vegetation is generally stinted in its growth, and looks forlorn enough indeed. Monuments of brightest marble and exquisite sculpture dazzle the eye on all sides; and there are smooth and gravelled walks, terraces, and flowery banks, paths winding along the hillside, and little scenery of every variety; and nature has borrowed so many ornaments from art, and wears them with so lively a grace, that one is disposed rather to admiration than to melancholy musings; one would think that Hymen and Cupid and not Death walked through her hills and valleys.

This city, like living cities, has its fashionable and rabble districts; its Broadways and Chestnut streets, its Southwark, and Northern Liberties. On the summits and flanks of all the hills, or apart, and half hidden in groves of pines, are mausoleums rich with Egyptian,Grecian, and modern luxury. It seems as if the dead, the business of life being done, had retired here to their magnificent villas. Only think of your scraggy grave-yards of Philadelphia—enough to disgust one with dying. Distinguished and learned dust is collected here from all nations, and virtues are puffed and advertised in all human languages. Whatever one may think of the French people alive, one cannot hope to meet any where a better set of dead people. Here are none but faithful husbands and incorruptible wives, and you would think it had rained patriots. As for great generals, they seem to come up in the parsley-bed as they did in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Surely Père la Chaise still exercises his office of absolution on these grounds.

At the foot of the hill are immense multitudes of dead in a level and open field, assorted in rows, as the vegetables in the Garden of Plants. These are the working people of the other world. They have no shelter of marble, or of shrubbery, or of cypress; no weeping willow hangs its branches upon the little hill of earth, but a small black board, shaped into a cross, and standing up prim at the head of each one, reveals his humble name and merits. You seethe hearse arrive here with a few attendants on foot. A priest in an old rusty gown, a boy in a frock no longer white, and an officer under a cocked hat, attend. These form a little procession from the hearse: the priest mutters an epitome of the service, and sprinkles the holy water upon the grave; he, the grave-digger, and the driver betraying not the slightest emotion in the performance of these duties; and the whole escort disappears suddenly and silently. Beyond this, is a field of a still humbler lot, where anything is buried; this they call theFosses communs. They who have no money, consequently no friends, are buried here. It is a yawning excavation, into which one cannot look without horror. The corpse is carried down a long stairway, and placed without distinction of age or sex in a row alongside the corpse which preceded it; and the name of the individual is no more heard—upon the earth. He was perhaps a suicide, or a victim of some accident or murder, a stranger without a friend, or a labourer without a home. No priest attends here.—One other piece of earth, retired from the rest, has a special designation. It is the only religious distinction of the cemetery; the burial place of the Jews.

“Beneath her palm, here sad Judea weeps.”

The graves of the rich are mostly held in perpetuity; those of the poor are disposable anew at the end of every six years; the first lessee having always the right of pre-emption. There is a chapel on the highest spot of the cemetery, and from its threshold the priest has a naked view of all Paris. He has spread out before him his whole stock in trade, and sees his customers winding up the hill; of which every day furnishes him its contingent. If for the district of the poor, he performs the service, as I have described, by his deputies.

But when you see the portals of the marble palace open between the Corinthian columns, and winged angels, chiselled from the marble of Genoa, and the priest kneeling in deep devotion before the altar, all of gold; you will see at the same time the whole street leading up to the Barrière d’Aulney filled with an immense cortége of gorgeous equipages, all of crape; and you will see in the first carriages persons in deep distress, mopping their eyes, all swollen with grief. Keep in your tears, they are not the least vexed. On the contrary, they cry with a great deal of pleasure. They are crying by the month, and getting their living by it. This custom ofcrying by deputy was practised by the Romans, and is common to all the refined nations of modern Europe; and it is known that hired weepers can wail and cry a great deal better than they who are really grieved; they have a greater quantity of salt water, and have given it the habit of running out by the eyes. The coffin descends from the hearse, glittering with the precious metals, and whilst music wakes around, or speeches are pronounced in eloquent grief, or masses chanted in classic Latin, it is conveyed with pomp into its vault, and laid up for eternity upon its shelf. There is a person here, who keeps a register of the names of the deceased, and is a kind of chief clerk to the Fates.

There is one day of the year when all Paris comes hither dressed in white robes, ten thousand at a time, to do honour to the dead. It looks as if the sheeted dead themselves had risen from the earth. This is called theFête des Morts. Each one brings a garland or crown, and hangs it over a friend or relative; and the whole city bends before the graves of General Foy, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Indeed every day of the year that the weather will permit, the cemetery is crowded, either with strangers led by curiosity, or with friends busied in trimming the foliage or flowers, or hanging funeral wreaths upon the monuments. This may be partly vanity, but vanity is a very good quality, if rightly directed, and a great many excellent virtues may be grafted on it. As for myself, I have always found it exceedingly difficult to practise several of the virtues when no one was looking on.

I observed, on entering, a gothic monument, and under its dome, two figures of persons recumbent at the side of each other, who were not always of marble. I will not tell you their names. If they had gone quietly with their marriage articles to St. Sulpice, and to bed, and distributed the wedding cake the next day to their cousins of St. Germain, I should not now have the pleasure of musing upon this little gothic chapel; we should have been deprived of one of the best love-tales that ever was, and some of the best verses in our English language, andNouvelle Heloiseinto the bargain. Unsuccessful wooing, you see, has its uses. What would you gentle shepherdesses have done without Petrarch’s sonnets, without Virgil’s fourth book, and Sappho’s little ditty, Englished by Philips.

The Republic brought this pair of lovers from Chalons to Paris, where they have been knocked about, till they have become as common as any pair of students and grisettes of the Luxembourg, (the barbarians!) instead of embowering them in the shady wood at a distance from the road, by the side of a murmuring and romantic stream, where the traveller might alight from his horse, just at setting sun, and give his undisturbed and undivided feelings to their hapless fates. Here they are, the unfortunates, alongside of any body, who has died in lawful wedlock, and their history, as if no one knew it, written upon their tomb, in fine round text, with their names. The children are learning to spell on it: a, b,ab;eby itselfe; l, a, r, d,lard.—I am now writing from the spot, perhaps the very spot in which their hearts beat so high in love, and sank so deep in despair—in the very spot, for all I know, in the very chamber—where she “hung upon his lips, and drank delicious poison from his eye!”—where now, alas, no loves are disappointed, and where there is no drinking of any thing stronger or sweeter than a littlevin ordinaireafter one’s potage.

On leaving this fairy spot, I wandered alonga hundred little footpaths, and read over a thousand crabbed names, which carried no signification to the mind, of a thousand polite nothings, who had put on their breeches in the morning and taken them off at night, and who have monuments in Père la Chaise for such merits—to MonsieurDoda, who made excellentpatés de foies gras; besides, he made the PapageVero-Doda, and he has the mausoleum of a prince, splendid with festoons, I believe of sausages, on the pediment; and a MonsieurSebastian, who made shoes for the Duchesse de Berri’s dear little feet, has one still more magnificent,—this is the man who made the slipper “dans un moment d’enthousiasme;” and lastly a coiffeur—inexorable fate!

“Sensible et genereux, dont le cœur gouta l’ivresseDu bonheur, du genie.” ... and so forth.

An obelisk of Carrara marble, forty feet high, was about to rise upon the tomb of M. Boulard, “Upholsterer.” He had journeyed himself to Genoa and chosen the marble, and a foundation trench forty feet deep had been dug, and 400,000 francs devoted to the monument; but his heirs have thought proper to depart from the intentions of the testator, and have buried him in a chapel at St. Mandé which he had built himself at the cost of a million of francs. The site ofhis grave here is occupied by the pyramidal monument, with two lateral staircases of fifteen or twenty steps descending to its base, of a rich Portuguese family, Dios Santos.

A Frenchman, who enjoys life so well, is, of all creatures, the least concerned at leaving it. He selects his marble of the finest tints; and has often his coffin made and grave dug in advance. I noticed several open graves, which seemed to me yawning for their victims. They dig a good many a-head, so as to have them on hand, like ready-made coats (without the sleeves) at the mercer’s. If a Frenchman buries his wife, he erects her a tomb and one (blanc) for himself, at the side of her. Then frolics out life in wine and good dinners, and has his tomb at Père la Chaise as his box at the opera. He buries his wife too the more splendidly, having a half interest in the concern.

I found myself at length upon a street crowded with most remarkable personages; but so many, that I must put you off as Homer did with his ships. Here wasFrançois Neufchatel, a minister of the Interior, and author in prose and rhyme, who sung,tour à tour, Marie Antoinette and the Republic, who loved Napoleon and the Empire, and rejoiced at the Restoration. In hisvicinity wasRegnaud St. Jean d’Angely, who used to put off his brass for gold, his words for wisdom, and sometimes, in America, his travelling mistress for his wife.

“Le meme jour a vu finirSes maux, son exil, et sa vie!”

And here too was the stern and philanthropicLanjuinais, who conjured up a devil he could not lay, in the revolution; and the great juristCambacérés—under Louis XVI. a squire of Montpelier, under the Convention, Citizen Cambacérés; Colleague of Bonaparte in the consulate, and President, Duke, Prince, and Marshal of the Empire under Napoleon. The sword sometimes yields to the gown, and the laurel to the toga. He died with all the decorations of Europe about his neck. I would have graven the Code Napoleon upon his tomb. Remember to give him the credit for dissuading the execution of the Duke d’Enghein, the Russian and Spanish campaigns, and the continuation of the war after Dresden. But he never put his honours to the hazard of dissuading any thing very strenuously; like Piso, the Roman, he never differed long in opinion with a “man who had ten legions.”

Do let me introduce you to MonsieurDenon;he loved the ladies so, and what is more, the ladies loved him; he first taught us to read hieroglyphics, and brought us news out of Egypt about Pharoah and the Ptolemies, and he brought over that great “Zodiac of Dendera” in the king’s library;—and to M.Messier, who did not know there was a Revolution in France, being very busy about the revolution of the stars. While his wife was dying, he asked a few minutes’ absence to look after a comet. He died himself in looking through a telescope, and his friends had but one eye to close on that occasion. Not a word toChenier, the Jacobin poet; the world has not yet made up its mind about his merits; nor toParny, whose poetry is good enough to deserve your contempt, pure and unqualified. A lyre hangs upon the tomb ofGrêtry, and a globe in flames upon Madame Blanchard.

If I had time, I would inveigh here against the audacity of woman. She kills tyrants, commits suicide, and goes up in balloons. She leaves us nothing, unless going to war, and scarcely that, to characterize our manhood. A Roman Emperor was obliged to forbid her, by an edict, the profession of the gladiators.—I must not pass unnoticed M.Pinée, who passedhis life, and with some success, in teaching crazy folks to be reasonable—those in the mad-house. And those two brothers, not less worthy than the best, they who gave eyes to the blind and ears to the dumb,HaüyandSicard;—they must not be forgotten; and here is a poor poet (excuse the tautology) who is buried as decently as if he had made sausages.

I will conclude this part of my catalogue, already as long as Lloyd’s or Homer’s, with a Scotch cousin of mine, Mr.Justice. He left his wife, young, amiable, and beautiful as she was, in Edinburgh, for the pleasures of Paris; which pleasures brought him in time to the prison of St. Pelagie. His wife (I will inquire after her health when I go to Scotland) flew to his rescue. She could not procure his enlargement on account of the greatness of his debts, but she stayed with him in the prison, attended him in his illness, and consoled him, and reformed him in his dying moments. She has placed here a modest tomb upon his grave.

If you hear any one speak ill of a woman, have him taken out and fifty lashes given him on my account. I will settle all the costs and damages at the Common Pleas.

We are now upon the summit. This site isunrivalled in beauty. Montroye, Sêvres, Meudon, Mount Calvary, and St. Cloud, are spread before us in the distant prospect. The eye, too, rests upon the green fields and flowery pastures of Montreuil, and forests of Vincennes; and at our feet is that great miracle of the world, Paris; its gilded towers, domes, and palaces, glittering in the sun; and the frequent hearse is bringing up its daily contribution of the inhabitants. It is near the close of a fine day of autumn. The yellow leaf detached from its branch, comes lingering and flutters towards the earth, and is trodden upon by the passers by; others on the same branch are yet green, or tinged with the blight of the first frosts.

That Xerxes, in contemplating his multitudinous legions, should weep over the prospect of their mortality, he being on the very errand of killing men, seems to me a notable absurdity; but that I, who leave them to die just as they please, should weep a little, in a place so favourable to such emotions, would be reasonable enough. While I stood here yesterday and looked down upon this hive of human beings; listened to the hum of its many voices, and saw the silent earth open to receive all this life and animation: when I looked upon the many gravesof my own countrymen here, and reflected that to-morrow—to-morrow, far from my friends and native country, I might become one of the number! Why, I would have wept outright, if my manhood had not interfered. After all, such feelings were perhaps more remarkable in Xerxes; and Herodotus was right to give him, and not me, credit with posterity. Common passions in common men are not subjects of history; but that the “king of kings,” who challenged mountains, and fettered oceans, and led myriads to slaughter, should yet have his lucid intervals of humanity—this is a matter worthy of record.

This is the choice spot of the cemetery. It is the spot distinguished for the best society. It is covered with the richest array of tombs, and all the arts of statuary, sculpture and architecture have employed their best skill upon its embellishment. It is the aristocracy of the grave. Here are the Peeresses, the Princesses, and High Mightinesses. The rich house of Ormesson, Montausin and Montmorency, and “all the blood of all the Howards,” are upon this Hill. “Ici repose très haute, et très puissante dame, Emma Coglan, Duchesse de Castries;” and here is the proud mausoleum of Russian Kate’s superb noblewoman,Madame Demidoff; which,although in bad taste, deserves, for its richness, whole days of admiration to itself. Not one of the cleverest of the Parisians is a match for this fur-clad damsel of the Neva. Here, too, is Joseph, the money changer, and other men of arithmetic; the Barings and the Rothschilds of Père la Chaise, with winged goddesses perched upon their tombs where ought to be Multiplication Tables. And finally ministers and great marshals of France, all who have not been ashamed to come to the term of life according to the due course of mortality, are buried here. Here with images of their living features, upon pyramids that pierce the skies,—

“Heroes in animated marble frown,And legislators seem to think in stone.”

I thought of Washington by the way-side. I thought of Franklin at the corner of Arch and Fifth—in the midst of a city so improved and adorned by his genius, so honoured by his virtues, with no sculpture but the letters of his name, no mausoleum but the grave-digger’s cell.

The monument of Foy is reared by the gratitude of the city of Paris, with almost barbaric magnificence; “kings for such a tomb would wish to die.” They have sculptured upon its façade the principal military events of his life. His statue has a majestic and noble air such as becomes the great Deputy, whose eloquence was lightning, and whose tongue was armed with thunder. The countenance is solemn, and the arm outstretched as if to announce some awful admonition.

Other great men, also, have monuments here, pre-eminent in splendour.Kellerman, whose name recals the republican victories of Valmy and Jemappes;Suchet, the oldest of the marshals; his ornaments are Rivoli, Zurich, Genoa, Esling. Two wingedVictorieshold a crown over the head ofLefebvre, and a serpent, the symbol of immortality twines around his sword; his trophies are Montmirail, Dantzig, the Passage of the Rhine; and nextJourdan,Serrurier,Davoust, and choicer than all, the great Duke of Tarento, the Prince of Eckmuhl, the rapaciousMassena. How silent! not a footstep is heard of all those who rushed to the battle.

These military men outdo by far, in the splendour of their monuments, all the other classes.—Ceres and Bacchus, on account of the pure, universal and durable benefits they had conferred upon mankind, were raised to the rank of supreme divinities, says Plutarch, but Hercules, and Theseus, and the other heroes were placedonly in the rank of demi-gods, because their services were transitory, and intermixed with the evils of war. The French have reversed this wisdom of the Greeks in Père la Chaise.

But, indeed, if they would snatch a little of their fame from the oblivious grave, there is scarce any other way left; they have so spoilt the trade of glory, by competition. Why, Bonaparte used to send, of these heroes, whole bulletins to Paris weekly; and in Great Britain there are no longer ale-houses, and sign-posts to hang them upon; Smiths, Auchmuties, Abercrombies, and Wellingtons;—memory has a surfeit of their names. Human veneration is not infinite, and it is expanded till, like the circle upon the stream, it terminates in naught. They who lived before Agamemnon will soon have as good a chance as their successors; Werter will be as good a hero as Cato, and the Red Rover as Lord Nelson.

In the early ages, when events were rare, and men had scarce any thing to do but live their nine hundred years, heroes had some chance to be preserved. They could transmit even their mummied bodies to posterity; but with us, loaded as we are with all this biography, all this history, besides what science and lettersare daily imposing upon us—with us, who come here to Père la Chaise at threescore, to expect such advantage is unreasonable. The truth is, we cannot get along under the accumulated load, and we must sacrifice a part for the safety of the rest of the crew. We must heave a few Massenas and Lord Wellingtons overboard. Ought I not to say a word in this paragraph of the unfortunate Ney? He is buried here, like his fellow martyr, Labedoyere, at the feet of the Suchets. A single cypress is all that grows over the “bravest of the brave!” Read; “çi git le Marechal Ney, Duc d’Elchingen, Prince de la Moscowa: Decédé! * * *le 7 December, 1815. I humbly take my leave of the Rivolis, and the Wagrams.”

Here is a most beautiful tomb of a lady surmounted by an image of Silence, her finger on her lip. Does it intimate the lady could keep a secret? Oh, no, it admonishes other ladies to hold their tongues. This one isallFrench. “Ici repose Georgina, fille deMademoiselleMars.” She adds,Gardez vos larmes pour sa mère. Whoever loves Thalia, and the Graces will not disobey the admonition. And now let me introduce you toBouffleur, thefleur des chevaliers; toDelille, who went down to posterity behind Virgil and Milton; and toBernardin de St. Pierre, of whom one forgets to remember only Paul and the delicious Virginia. Here, too, isLaplace, allotted his six feet like the rest.Eheu! Quid prodest?andFourcroy, undergoing one of his own experiments. In the centre of all these isMolièrehimself. They should have left room beside him for Miss Mars, his best commentary—if, in spite of time, she should chance ever to die. Here, too, isTalma, andMademoiselle Raucourtimmortal for feigning others’ passions, andLafontaine, for telling other people’s tales. He has no occasion to think any thing new, who can dress others’ thoughts to such advantage. I observed also a few learned ladies, Madame Guizot, Dufresnoy, and above all, MadameCottin. Are you not sorry she died at twenty-eight, when so many fools never die at all. It is plain, Providence does not trouble itself about what we call human greatness; or genius would not perish thus in its infancy, and so many glorious and manly enterprises would not die in the hatching. Virgil would have lived till the completion of his Æneid; Apelles would have put the finishing hand upon his Venus. I regret that I must pass with only a nod of recognition, Palissot, Mercier, Millevoye, Guinguené, David the painter, and even the elegant, the witty, and profligate Beaumarchais. Who can pass without a sigh the grave of Lavallette? His head was stripped of its hair, and prepared for the guillotine, when he was saved by his wife. Her agitation, and excessive terror lest he should be retaken, affected her brain, and she went mad. Her madness is of a calm and melancholy kind; she sits whole hours in meditation, and has not spoken a word these several years. She is lodged in amaison de santénear Paris.

I strolled awhile amongst the “temporary cessions,” the graves of the poor. There are no trees here, nor artificial tombs. A border of boxwood, and sometimes a wire wicker work, with a wooden cross, is all their decoration. I read the inscriptions upon the crosses.

—— Pierre RobinAge de 67 ansUnes des victimes du 28 Juillet, 1830.

By the side in the same wicker enclosure:

Ici repose une victimeinconnu, du 28 Julliet, 1830.

A little tri-coloured flag was waving between them.

The following is of a mother, upon a child of four years:—

Prés de mourir, elle nous disait: Ne pleure pas,Papa; ne pleure pas mamma; je me sens mieux,Et elle mourut!

Of a son:

Passant, donne une larme à ma mere, en passant à la tienne.

Of a wife:

Elle vecut bien, elle aima bien, elle mourut bien.

Of an old woman of 81:

Une jour on dira de moi, ce qu’on a dit des autres;Marie Anne Palet est morte, et l’on n’en parlera plus.

This one is pretty:

Pauvre Marie,A 29 Ans!

There is a still prettier one of the same kind at New York. “My Mother.”

The simple language of the heart succeeds better in epitaphs than the “lettered Muse;” for grief at the dissolution of natural ties is usually more intense amongst the poor than the rich; this is notoriously manifest in the funeral ceremonies of Père la Chaise. How indeed should any lady not rejoice when her lord is dead, if she looks well in black? and my young lord who has popped into an estate and title, how should he be sorry? One ought not, however,to blame the rich for exhibiting the signs of woe even where the reality is deficient. The affectation of a virtue is better than the neglect of it; but I would not have it carried to a ridiculous excess. I have heard of a French nobleman here, a M. Brumoi, who, at his mother’s death, put his park into mourning; he craped his deer; put black fish in his ponds; and brought from Paris several barrels of ink to supply hisjets d’eaux. And every one has read of the Danish count, who had his statue placed by the grave of his wife upon a spring, causing the water to spurt through one of the eyes. This statue exists yet near Copenhagen, and is called the “Weeping Eye.”—You will often see, amongst the poor of Père la Chaise, a half-grown girl kneeling by the fresh earth after the convoy has departed, or a mother lingering over the grave of her child.

I ascended the hill again by the east side. Only think of walking upon the very earth consecrated so often by the pious footsteps of Madame de Maintenon. It was here she poured out her little peccadillos into the bosom of Père la Chaise. She brought him out from his obscurity of schoolmaster of Lyons, and raised him to the dignity of confessor (some say rival) tothe king. This father was of extraordinary personal beauty, and polished manners. When he had stepped into the graces of the king, he used the royal favour to enrich himself and his order. His style of living was magnificent, his equipages gorgeous, and in his costly banquets he rivalled the most sumptuous monarchs. To gain admission to his soirées was a favour solicited by princes. He was crafty, wily, subtle, and eloquent, says Duclos, and he alarmed or soothed the conscience of the king as best suited his interests. “He surprises his Majesty,” says Madame de Maintenon, “into the most boundless liberality, by the mere force of his eloquence.” The king pronounced himself, theélogeof his confessor at his death in 1709. “He was always,” says his Majesty, “of a forgiving temper.”

On the site of these tombs, were once his pleasure grounds, and here the proud Jesuit often stood and looked down upon the court and city at his feet. The ruins of his elegant summer palace have perished, but a part of his orchard still remains. I walked up through a low valley, once the channel of a stream that had supplied the water pots, the cascades, and fountains of this reverend father. It is a romantic spot, but barren of trees and shrubbery. I would plant here the drooping willow, the cypress of hoary gray; and I would teach the jay bird, in its plumage of crape, to build here its nest; and, while ambition climbs the summit of the hill, the tender poets and the unfortunate lovers should come to be buried in this melancholy valley.

It is an advantage of eternity, that one may squander as much as one pleases of it without diminishing the capital. I found that the sun of our world was descending fast upon the roofs of St. Cloud, and I was obliged to run over an acre or two of graves with only a general stare. I hurried about in search of several I had heard distinguished for their splendour, but in vain. There should be a “directory” to tell us where the dead people live. I stumbled at last upon a whole plot of English, coteried apart near the wall side; General Murray; Cochran, brother of the admiral; Caroline Sydney Smith, my lady Campbell, Captain O’Conner, and other august personages. Their tombs are very genteel. An Englishman always seems to me (foolishly perhaps) a greater man than a Frenchman, and a Roman than a Greek, with the same degree of merit. The one, I believe, makes hiswisdom pass for more, the other for less than it is worth. The great polish of the human character diminishes its solidity. Lord Chesterfield would have been a greater man if he had been more an Englishman.

Lord Bacon and Shakspeare both say, that a certain reserve of speech and manner adds to the general opinion of one’s merits. The Frenchman wastes, and the Englishman husbands his greatness; the latter hides his little passions, and does small things by deputy. Like Moses, he retires into the mountain, and bids Aaron “speak unto the children of Israel.” But the truth is, there is an illusion in my mind at present about all that is English; I have been so long over head and ears in French people. I read over these English graves as a studious school-boy his lesson.

Whilst perusing this page of the great volume, I came with astonishment, not expecting such a rencontre, upon the names of several of our own countrymen, and even of our own townsmen. Of Philadelphia were William Temple Franklin, Adam Seybert, our old congressman and chemist, Samuel Rawlston and Jacob Girard Koch; he who used to “breakfast with the Houris and quaff nectar with Jove at noon.” His greatregret, they say, in dying, was an apprehension that there might not be good dinners in the other world. There is here an eloquent and simple tomb upon the grave of Miss Butler, who was cut off in the expectation of unusual accomplishments and in the roseate freshness of her youth.

“Rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses,L’espace d’un matin.”——

I remarked, also, the names of K. M. Smith, New York, Harriet Lewis, New London, Frances Morrison, Kentucky, Francina Wilder, and Mrs. Otis of Boston. A cypress is planted by the grave of Dr. Campbell of Tennessee, and some fresh garlands are hung upon its branches. Who is he who has won these pious attentions from the hands of strangers? I am now writing from the inkstand which once belonged to him, and which I will put with my relics. I am lodging in his room, and with the person who attended his fatal illness. She gave me his biography as follows: “He was always good, always polite, and every one loved him;” and then she burst into tears.

The last grave I looked upon, I will now read to you: “Died, March 1st, 1832, Frances Anne,Countess Colonna de Walewski, daughter of the late John Bulkeley, Esq., of Lisbon, widow of the late General Humphreys, of the United States, minister in Spain and Portugal.”—I could write a romance at the foot of this monument. I lingered here until the last glimmerings of day faded, and night covered all but the bleak and snowy marble. I then descended the hill, and with many a solemn reflection, reached my solitary lodge in the Faubourg St. Germain.

Let us reason awhile about the grave. The custom of locating grave yards in cities and towns, so universal in America, has been discontinued in nearly all these old countries of Europe. France has set the excellent example, which has been followed through the continent, and the large towns of England—London, Liverpool, Manchester, Cheltenham, and several others—and all the world acknowledges its necessity. Such a measure was not adopted here until the agency of burying grounds in corrupting the air and producing disease, was proved by numerous examples and experiments.

An account of these, contained in several hundred pages, was published by Maset, secretary to the Academy of Dijon, the one-twentieth part of which would fill with terror all thosewho live in dangerous contiguity with a city grave-yard. It is high time your towns in America should give this subject a serious attention. Your grave-yards are multiplying in number and extent prodigiously in the midst of communities which are likely, in a few years, to be numerously increased. Your Pottsville, which is about eight years old, has already six grave-yards, whose population nearly equals that of the village.

All those who die upon the railroads, mines, and canals, for twenty miles around, have themselves carried in and buried in town—as if to be convenient to market. A citizen of Pottsville does consent sometimes to reside in the country during his lifetime, but he does not think it genteel to pass his eternity out of town; and your miner soothes himself with the consolation that though he has many toils and perils in life, he will one day come out of the ground to be buried in Pottsville. It is in their infancy that such evils ought to be averted. They are more easily prevented than cured. And there are enough of other considerations besides health to urge the importance of the subject.

Every body knows the indecent irreverence and general inattention with which grave-yardsare regarded in towns and cities. In many of them monuments are defaced and scribbled on, and the place even desecrated sometimes by the obscenity and brutal violation of visitors. To prevent this, they are often enclosed by high walls and rendered invisible. If the object were to forget one’s ancestors there could not be a better contrivance. It is worth while to squander away the best parts of a city to bring one’s deceased parents into oblivion or contempt! That this is the case cannot be denied. The citizen, the clergyman, the grave-digger, and the sexton, are all affected by the bones of their ancestors alike.

Who first brought this system of vampyrism into use? It was at least modern. At Babylon they buried the dead in the valley of ... look into your Bible; and the valley of Jehoshaphat, I believe, was out of town. The interment of the dead within the precincts of the city was prohibited at Rome by law. The Greeks had the same regulation, and forbade expressly that the temples of the gods should be profaned by the sepulture of the dead. The Achæans buried only one man in town, Aratus—look into your Plutarch. If they had governed our city councils they would haveburied us all out of town, except “Benjamin Franklin, and Deborah his wife.” The first Christians followed the Pagans and Jews in this, and for a long time graves were not allowed to encroach upon the sanctuary of the church. But some pious and popular bishop having died in the course of time, I presume they buried him with his church, as they bury an Indian with his canoe; and then another and another, or perhaps some fat and lazy priest wished to have his dead family about him for the convenience of praying upon them. Who is going all the way to Père la Chaise? So he could just step out in his gown and slippers and dismiss the poor soul to purgatory, and then step back again to hissoupe à la Julien. And then came avarice to sanction this convenience. We can heap generation upon generation and sell a church-yard over and over again to eternity.

Make me chief burgess of Pottsville, and I will provide a choice piece of ground overlooking the village, and apart from the living habitations—on a single plot, and with separate apartments for the several denominations; and this I will cultivate tastefully with trees and shrubbery, and lay it out with agreeable walks.

I will make the dead an ornament, instead of a nuisance and deformity to the living; and I will bind your erratic population to the soil, by the decency with which I will bury their fathers and mothers; and by improving the kindred affections, I will improve, at the same time, the moral and religious feelings of the community. I will carve out, from one of your rugged hills, a decent and solitary retreat, where we may sometimes escape from the business, the anxieties and frivolities of life, and where we may peruse the last sad page of our own history, upon the silent and solemn annals of the grave.

In a place of decent appearance, and of public resort and ample space, we have the means (which we have not in our shabby and contracted grave-yards of the towns) of paying honour to the memory of an eminent citizen, or public benefactor; a duty in which we are negligent beyond the example of all other nations; and emulating the princely splendour of Europe in other things, we cannot excuse ourselves upon the republicanism and simplicity of our tastes, in this. Are the virtues of a great man so graven upon our memories, that he needs no other memorial? And are we all so virtuous,ourselves and our children, as to need no excitements to emulation?—To do honour to those who have performed eminent service to the community, is as well a commendable policy, as it is an act of justice and gratitude. It produces, in generous minds, a rivalship of honourable actions. It makes one good deed the parent of a numerous offspring. It is the seed of virtue—the grain of corn that rewards the cultivator with a full and ripened ear.

On the other hand, neglect, the cold neglect that is practised in our country, freezes the current of public spirit; and the people, who are guilty of it, need not complain that they are barren of generous actions, or that they, who have been fortunate in acquiring wealth, should choose to spend it rather upon selfish and transitory interests, than upon schemes of permanent public utility. Even our savages pay respectful honours to the dead, and a luxury of grave-yards is of all antiquity; it has even the most ancient scriptural authority in favour of it.—“Thou art a mighty prince, in thechoicestof our sepulchres bury thy dead.”—(Genesis).

I will now put an end to this long letter, with a few of the French regulations for the inhumation of the dead of cities and towns.

All cemeteries are required to be located without the towns, avoiding low, wet, or confined situations. On an elevated site, the fœtid emanations are dispersed by the winds. The dead bodies are to be covered with, at least, four feet of earth, and placed in such a manner that there may be four feet of interval between each, and two feet at the head and foot—about fifty-two square feet for each corpse. It is known, from experiment, that animal decomposition requires about four years, and the grave-yard is to be made four times greater than appears necessary for the number of persons to be interred in it.

The graves are disposed of in perpetuity, or in temporary cessions of six years; the former at twenty-five dollars per metre, of three feet; two metres are required for a grave; and the latter at ten dollars.Theseare disposable anew at the end of the term—the first occupant having the “refusal.” From the extent of the grounds, this has not yet been required. But Death has nearly filled up the whole space, and is looking out for additions to his estate. A miser, who lives next door to him, taking advantage of his necessity, asks, for three-quarters of an acre, twelve thousand dollars!

All the funerals are in the hands of a company, who have their office, keep a registry of the dead, and attend to all their wants. Companies having no souls, the French fulfil the scriptures, and “let the dead bury the dead.” Having its stock of carriages, grave-diggers, weepers, and all such things on hand, the company is enabled, they say, to bury cheaper than the individuals themselves. It has, besides, a fixed price for the rich, which enables it to eat an annual dinner, and to bury the poor for nothing. The dinner is, no doubt good, but the burying of the poor, as all things else which are done for nothing in Paris, is performed in a niggardly and heartless manner. If you make any such provision for your new grave-yard of Pottsville, let it honour the hand that confers it. Give the poor man his priest, and apply to a life, perhaps, of unmerited sorrows—a little extreme unction.

The leaves, nipt by the first frosts, are already strewed thick upon the Luxembourg; and your hills are, no doubt, putting on their variegated hues of the autumn. My advice is, that you dissolve the cold, by putting largely of the anthracite upon your grate; that you bring out your old wine, and be joyful, while your kneesare green—see where Père la Chaise stands beckoning from the heights of Mont-Louis.—I give my compliments to the girls, and say you sweet, good night.

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