glish and Irish Churches have
_impoverished_ the country."

"Such are the results of education," thought I as I passed beside them
and came fairly among the tombs. Here, at least, there were no
commonplace politics, no diluted this-morning's leader, to distract or
offend me. The old shabby church showed, as usual, its quaint extent of
roofage and the relievo skeleton on one gable, still blackened with the
fire of thirty years ago. A chill dank mist lay over all. The Old
Greyfriars' churchyard was in perfection that morning, and one could go
round and reckon up the associations with no fear of vulgar
interruption. On this stone the Covenant was signed. In that vault, as
the story goes, John Knox took hiding in some Reformation broil. From
that window Burke the murderer looked out many a time across the tombs,
and perhaps o' nights let himself down over the sill to rob some
new-made grave. Certainly he would have a selection here. The very walks
have been carried over forgotten resting-places; and the whole ground is
uneven, because (as I was once quaintly told) "when the wood rots it
stands to reason the soil should fall in," which, from the law of
gravitation, is certainly beyond denial. But it is round the boundary
that there are the finest tombs. The whole irregular space is, as it
were, fringed with quaint old monuments, rich in death's-heads and
scythes and hour-glasses, and doubly rich in pious epitaphs and Latin
mottoes--rich in them to such an extent that their proper space has run
over, and they have crawled end-long up the shafts of columns and
ensconced themselves in all sorts of odd corners among the sculpture.
These tombs raise their backs against the rabble of squalid
dwelling-houses, and every here and there a clothes-pole projects
between two monuments its fluttering trophy of white and yellow and red.
With a grim irony they recall the banners in the Invalides, banners as
appropriate perhaps over the sepulchres of tailors and weavers as these
others above the dust of armies. Why they put things out to dry on that
particular morning it was hard to imagine. The grass was grey with drops
of rain, the headstones black with moisture. Yet, in despite of weather
and common-sense, there they hung between the tombs; and beyond them I
could see through open windows into miserable rooms where whole families
were born and fed, and slept and died. At one a girl sat singing merrily
with her back to the graveyard; and f