not thought to be desirable
accomplishments in a rustic population, but dwellers in cities had
been for generations improving their manners, and thus it was that no
such provincial vulgarity as a decorated tombstone could be tolerated
in the choice metropolis.

The clergy were always the masters in such matters, and their
influence is seen in many places, even in the villages, in keeping
the churchyard free from ridicule; but, broadly speaking, there is
no doubt that the rectors and vicars in London and other large cities
began quite a hundred years earlier than those of the villages that
control and supervision over the carving and inscriptions on
the tombstone which is now the almost universal rule. It was
unquestionably the adoption of this practice by the country parson,
late in the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth century,
that put an end in rural places to the "period" of illustrated
epitaphs which had long gone out of fashion, or, more likely, had
never come into being, among the busier hives of humanity.

A rare variety of the cloud-and-angel series, which are so frequent,
is seen in Longfield Churchyard on the Maidstone Road. Trumpets of
the speaking or musical order are frequently introduced to typify the
summons to resurrection, but here we have the listener pourtrayed by
the introduction of an ear-trumpet.

[Illustration: FIG. 50. WOOLWICH.]

[Illustration: FIG. 51. LONGFIELD.]

FIG. 51.--AT LONGFIELD.

"To Mary Davidge, died 1772, aged 69 years."

Allegorical gravestones of recent date, that is of the time which we
call the present day, are very seldom seen, and such as there are do
not come within the scope of this work. There is one in West
Wickham Churchyard devoted to a chorister, and sculptured with a
representation of the church organ-pipes. Memorials to deceased
Freemasons are perhaps the most frequent of late carvings, as in the
sketch from Lydd in the Romney Marsh district.

FIG. 52.--AT LYDD.

"To John Finn, died June 9th, 1813, aged 30 years."

Occasionally, too, some plain device appears on even a modern
headstone, such as the following, which is one of the few I have from
the London area. The graves of the same half-century may be searched
without finding many carvings more ambitious than this.

FIG. 53.--AT ST. JAMES'S, BERMONDSEY.

"To Charles Thomas Henry Evans, died 1849."

Churchyards beside the Upper Thames are nearly all prolific in old
gravestones, t