up the graves and
beasts lie in the porch."]

From one cause or another it is pretty certain that for every old
gravestone now to be seen twenty or more have disappeared.

In Gough's "Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain" many instances are
given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard
memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. In some cases the
church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to
removal of gravestones, in order that persons claiming an interest
in the remains might repair and restore them; but more frequently the
stones were cleared away and destroyed, or put somewhere out of sight
without observation. Sometimes this was the act of the Rector; at
other times individuals, exercising rights of ownership, have done the
disgraceful work, and occasionally the whole of the parishioners have
been implicated. Gough says that the inhabitants of Letheringham in
Suffolk, being under the necessity of putting their church into decent
order, chose to rebuild it, and sold the whole fabric, monuments and
all, to the building contractor, who beat the stones to powder, and
sold as much at three shillings a pound for terrace (?) as came to
eighty guineas. A portion of the fragments was rescued by the Rev.
Mr. Clubbe, and erected in form of a pyramid in the vicarage garden of
Brandeston, in the same county, with this inscription:

[Transcriber's note: the following is enclosed in a narrow border]

Indignant Reader!
These monumental remains are not, as thou
mayest suppose, the
Ruins of Time,
But were destroyed in an
Irruption of the Goths
So late in the Christian era as 1789.
Credite Posteri!

CHAPTER VIII.

REFORM AMONG THE GRAVESTONES.

That the state of the old churchyards in this country, down to the
middle of the nineteenth century, was a public scandal and disgrace,
is a remark which applies especially to London, where burial-grounds,
packed full of human remains, were still made available for
interments on a large scale until 1850 or later. The fact was the more
discreditable in contrast with the known example of Paris, which had,
as early as 1765, closed all the city graveyards, and established
cemeteries beyond the suburbs. One of the laws passed at the same time
by the Parliament of Paris directed that the graves in the cemeteries
should not be marked with stones, and that all epitaphs and
inscriptions should be placed on the walls, a