erspreads their graves, and no one is
permitted to pluck a leaf or a blossom.

The simple Breton people are deeply religious, and their veneration
for the dead is intense. They are frequently to be seen--men, women,
and children--kneeling on the ground in their churchyards, praying
among the graves. It may therefore be well believed that in the period
of burial reform which overspread the Continent in the earlier part of
the nineteenth century there was great opposition in Brittany to the
establishment of remote cemeteries. The thought of burying elsewhere
than in the parish churchyard was to the minds of the parishioners a
species of impiety. When reasoned with they would answer:

"Our fathers were buried here, and you would separate us from our
dead. Let us be buried here, where our kinsfolk can see our graves
from their windows, and the children can come at evening to pray."

In vain they were shewn the danger of accumulating corpses in a place
which was usually in the centre of the population. They shook their
heads and cried:

"Death comes only by the will of God."

Possibly, to some extent, this feeling is universal among mankind.
There is in our hearts an innate reverence for the burial-place; we
tread by instinct lightly over the sleeping-places of the dead, and
look with silent awe upon their tombs. The feeling being part of our
humanity, we might suppose it to be universal, and be apt to conclude
that, in our more primitive churchyards at least, we should find some
effort to preserve the whole or a large proportion of the memorials
which are there dedicated to departed merit, hallowed by love and
made sacred by sorrow. But it may truthfully be said that of all the
headstones (not to speak alone of _decorated_ headstones) which were
set up prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century, by far the
greater number have disappeared! Indeed the cases in which the old
churchyards have been the objects of any care whatever are lamentably
few, while attempts to preserve the old gravestones are almost
unknown. The ordinary experience is to find the churchyard more or
less neglected and forgotten, and the grey and aged stones either
sinking into the earth or tottering to their fall. It cannot be
imagined that the clergy, the wardens, and the sextons have failed to
see these things; but they have, presumedly, more pressing matters
to attend to, and it seems to be nobody's business to attend to such
ownerless and