The custom of decorating graves was once universally prevalent: osiers were carefully bent over them to keep the turf uninjured, and about them were planted evergreens and flowers. “We adorn their graves,” says Evelyn, in his Sylva, “with flowers and redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared in Holy Scriptures to those fading beauties whose roots, being buried in dishonor, rise, again in glory.” This usage has now become extremely rare in England; but it may still be met with in the churchyards of retired villages, among the Welsh mountains; and I recollect an instance of it at the small town of Ruthven, which lies at the head of the beautiful vale of Clewyd. I have been told also by a friend, who was present at the funeral of a young girl in Glamorganshire, that the female attendants had their aprons full of flowers, which, as soon as the body was interred, they stuck about the grave.

      He noticed several graves which had been decorated in the same manner. As the flowers had been merely stuck in the ground, and not planted, they had soon withered, and might be seen in various states of decay; some drooping, others quite perished. They were afterwards to be supplanted by holly, rosemary, and other evergreens, which on some graves had grown to great luxuriance, and overshadowed the tombstones.

      There was formerly a melancholy fancifulness in the arrangement of these rustic offerings, that had something in it truly poetical. The rose was sometimes blended with the lily, to form a general emblem of frail mortality. “This sweet flower,” said Evelyn, “borne on a branch set with thorns and accompanied with the lily, are natural hieroglyphics of our fugitive, umbratile, anxious, and transitory life, which, making so fair a show for a time, is not yet without its thorns and crosses.” The nature and color of the flowers, and of the ribbons with which they were tied, had often a particular reference to the qualities or story of the deceased, or were expressive of the feelings of the mourner. In an old poem, entitled “Corydon’s Doleful Knell,” a lover specifies the decorations he intends to use:

      A garland shall be framed

       By art and nature’s skill,

       Of sundry-colored flowers,

       In token of goodwill.

      And sundry-colored ribbons

       On it I will bestow;

       But chiefly blacke and yellowe

       With her to grave shall go.

      I’ll deck her tomb with flowers

       The rarest ever seen;

       And with my tears as showers

       I’ll keep them fresh and green.

      The white rose, we are told, was planted at the grave of a virgin; her chaplet was tied with white ribbons, in token of her spotless innocence, though sometimes black ribbons were intermingled, to bespeak the grief of the survivors. The red rose was occasionally used, in remembrance of such as had been remarkable for benevolence; but roses in general were appropriated to the graves of lovers. Evelyn tells us that the custom was not altogether extinct in his time, near his dwelling in the county of Surrey, “where the maidens yearly planted and decked the graves of their defunct sweethearts with rosebushes.” And Camden likewise remarks, in his Britannia: “Here is also a certain custom, observed time out of mind, of planting rose-trees upon the graves, especially by the young men and maids who have lost their loves; so that this churchyard is now full of them.”

      When the deceased had been unhappy in their loves, emblems of a more gloomy character were used, such as the yew and cypress, and if flowers were strewn, they were of the most melancholy colors. Thus, in poems by Thomas Stanley, Esq. (published in 1651), is the following stanza:

      Yet strew

       Upon my dismall grave

       Such offerings as you have,

       Forsaken cypresse and yewe;

       For kinder flowers can take no birth

       Or growth from such unhappy earth.

      In The Maid’s Tragedy, a pathetic little air, is introduced, illustrative of this mode of decorating the funerals of females who had been disappointed in love:

      Lay a garland on my hearse

       Of the dismall yew,

       Maidens, willow branches wear,

       Say I died true.

      My love was false, but I was firm,

       From my hour of birth;

       Upon my buried body lie

       Lightly, gentle earth.

      The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind; and we have a proof of it in the purity of sentiment and the unaffected elegance of thought which pervaded the whole of these funeral observances. Thus it was an especial precaution that none but sweet-scented evergreens and flowers should be employed. The intention seems to have been to soften the horrors of the tomb, to beguile the mind from brooding over the disgraces of perishing mortality, and to associate the memory of the deceased with the most delicate and beautiful objects in nature. There is a dismal process going on in the grave, ere dust can return to its kindred dust, which the imagination shrinks from contemplating; and we seek still to think of the form we have loved, with those refined associations which it awakened when blooming before us in youth and beauty. “Lay her i’ the earth,” says Laertes, of his virgin sister,

      And from her fair and unpolluted flesh

       May violets spring.

      Herrick, also, in his “Dirge of Jephtha,” pours forth a fragrant flow of poetical thought and image, which in a manner embalms the dead in the recollections of the living.

      Sleep in thy peace, thy bed of spice,

       And make this place all Paradise:

       May sweets grow here! and smoke from hence

       Fat frankincense.

      Let balme and cassia send their scent

       From out thy maiden monument.

       May all shie maids at wonted hours

       Come forth to strew thy tombe with flowers!

       May virgins, when they come to mourn

       Male incense burn

       Upon thine altar! then return

       And leave thee sleeping in thy urn.

      I might crowd my pages with extracts from the older British poets, who wrote when these rites were more prevalent, and delighted frequently to allude to them; but I have already quoted more than is necessary. I cannot, however, refrain from giving a passage from Shakespeare, even though it should appear trite, which illustrates the emblematical meaning often conveyed in these floral tributes, and at the same time possesses that magic of language and appositeness of imagery for which he stands preeminent.

      With fairest flowers,

       Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,

       I’ll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack

       The flower that’s like thy face, pale primrose; nor

       The azured harebell like thy veins; no, nor

       The leaf of eglantine; whom not to slander,

       Outsweetened not thy breath.

      There is certainly something more affecting in these prompt and spontaneous offerings of Nature than in the most costly monuments of art; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and the tear falls on the grave as affection is binding the osier round the sod; but pathos expires under the slow labor of the chisel, and is chilled among the cold conceits of sculptured