emorials of the dead among our neighbours abroad forbids the
expectation that any such as those which have appeared in our earlier
chapters are to be found in Europe outside the boundaries of our
Empire. In more modern observances, especially in the centres of
population, English and continental manners more nearly approximate;
and in the many new cemeteries which are now to be found adjacent
to the cities and large towns of Western Europe there are tombs and
gravestones as many and as costly as are to be found in any round
London. In Germany the present practice appears to be single
interments, and one inscription only on the stone, and that studiously
brief. Thus:

[Transcriber's note: inscriptions below enclosed in a border]

Eduard Schmidt
Geb d. 8 Oct., 1886.
Gest d. 10 Jan., 1887.

This I copied in the cemetery at Schaffhausen. But at Hendon, a
north-west suburb of London, has recently been placed against
the church wall a still simpler memorial, a small slab of marble,
inscribed:

Carl Richard Loose
B. 21. 1. 52: D. 14. 10. 81.

For brevity _in excelsis_ the following, from the cemetery at
Heidelberg, can hardly be eclipsed:

Michael Seiler
1805.--1887.

Sometimes the asterisk is used by the Germans to denote birth, and the
dagger (or cross) for death, thus:

Hier Risht in Gott
Natalie Brethke
* 1850 +- 1884

CHAPTER XIII.

VERY OLD GRAVESTONES.

Although, for reasons already explained or surmised, the gravestones
in our burial-grounds seldom exceed an age of 200 years, there has
probably been no time and no race of men in which such memorials were
unknown. Professor Dr. John Stuart, the Scottish antiquary,[15] opines
that "the erection of stones to the memory of the dead has been
common to all the world from the earliest times," and there are many
instances recorded in the Old Testament, as when Rachel died and Jacob
"set a pillar upon her grave" (Genesis, chapter xxxv. verse 20); and
another authority, Mr. R. R. Brash,[16] in a similar strain, comments
on the sentiment which appears to have been common to human nature
in all ages, and among all conditions of mankind, namely a desire to
leave after him something to perpetuate his memory, something more
durable than his frail humanity. This propensity doubtless led him in
his earliest and rudest state to set on end in the earth the rough and
unhewn pillar stone which he found lying prostrate on the surface, and
th