orld
like upright coffin-lids.... Some village burial-grounds here have,
however, escaped this treatment, and within the circuit of a few miles
round Warwick itself are many small hamlet churches each surrounded by
its lowly flock of green graves and grey headstones.... some half sunk
into the churchyard mould, many carved out into cherubins with their
trumpeter's cheeks and expanded wings, or with the awful emblems,
death's heads and bones and hour-glasses."

Of the so-called black tombstones I have seen none other than slate.

In a short tour through Wales, in 1898, I found very few old
headstones. Most of the memorials in the churchyards were constructed
of slate, which abundant material is devoted to every conceivable
purpose. There is a kind of clay-slate more durable than some of the
native stones, and even the poorer slate which perisheth is lasting in
comparison with the wooden planks which have been more or less adopted
in many burial-places, but can never have been expected to endure more
than a few brief years. Wherever seen they are usually in decay, and
under circumstances so forlorn that it is an act of mercy to end their
existence.

FIG. 86.--AT HIGH BARNET.

I conclude my English illustrations of the gravestones with one
selected from the churchyard at Kingston-on-Thames, and I leave its
interpretation to the reader.

[Illustration: FIG. 86. HIGH BARNET.]

[Illustration: FIG. 87. KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.]

FIG. 87.--AT KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

"To Thomas Bennett, died 7th Dec. 1800,
aged 13 years."

The remainder of my unambitious book will be mostly devoted to
impressions gained in Ireland and Scotland and on the Continent in my
autumn holidays.

CHAPTER X.

OLD GRAVESTONES IN IRELAND.

[Illustration: FIG. 88. SWORDS.]

In entering upon a chapter dealing with "Old Gravestones in Ireland,"
one is tempted to follow a leading case and sum up the subject in the
words: "There are no old gravestones in Ireland." But this would be
true only in a sense. Of those primitive and rustic carvings, which
are so distinctive of the eighteenth-century memorials in England, I
have found an almost entire absence in my holiday-journey ings about
Ireland--the churchyards of which I have sampled, wherever opportunity
was afforded me, from Belfast and Portrush in the north, down to
Killarney and Queenstown in the south. But there are unquestionably
old gravestones of quite a different order o