The Mode in Monuments - Page 2

to answer for among these graves, and they do not
seem to be ashamed of it.

From one elevated point in this cemetery one can count more than a
hundred urns, getting at last weary and confused with the receding
multitude. The urn is not dissimilar to the domestic mantel ornament,
and always a stony piece of textile fabric is feigned to be thrown over
its shoulder. At times it is wreathed in stony flowers. The only variety
is in the form. Sometimes your urn is broad and squat, a Silenus among
urns; sometimes fragile and high-shouldered, like a slender old maid;
here an "out-size" in urns stalwart and strong, and there a dwarf
peeping quaintly from its wrapping. The obelisks, too, run through a
long scale of size and refinement. But the curious man finds no hidden
connection between the carriage of the monument and the character of the
dead. Messrs. Slap & Dash apparently take the urn or obelisk that comes
readiest to hand. One wonders dimly why mourners have this overwhelming
proclivity for Messrs. Slap & Dash and their obelisk and urn.

The reason why the firm produces these articles may be guessed at. They
are probably easy to make, and require scarcely any skill. The
contemplative man has a dim vision of a grimy shed in a back street,
where a human being passes dismally through life the while he chips out
an unending succession of these cheap urns and obelisks for his
employers' retailing. But the question why numberless people will
profane the memory of their departed by these public advertisements of
Slap & Dash, and their evil trade, is a more difficult problem. For
surely nothing could be more unmeaning or more ungainly than the
monumental urn, unless it be the monumental obelisk. The plain cross, by
contrast, has the tenderest meaning, and is a simple and fitting
monument that no repetition can stale.

The artistic cowardice of the English is perhaps the clue to the
mystery. Your Englishman is always afraid to commit himself to criticism
without the refuge of a _tu quoque_. He is covered dead, just as he is
covered living, with the "correct thing." A respectable stock-in-trade
is proffered him by the insinuating shopman, to whom it is our custom to
go. He is told this is selling well, or that is much admired. Heaven
defend that he should admire on his own account! He orders the stock urn
or the stock slab because it is large and sufficiently expensive for his
means and sorrow, and because he knows of nothing better. So we mourn as
the stonemason decrees, or after the example and pattern of the Smiths
next door. But some day it will dawn upon us that a little thought and a
search after beauty are far more becoming than an order and a cheque to
the nearest