he riparian settlements having been well populated
during the favourable period. This is especially the case at Richmond
and Twickenham, but of the great number of eighteenth-century stones
in both churchyards there are few very remarkable. Richmond has a rare
specimen of the _full-relief_ skull. The death's head has on either
side of it the head of an angel in half-relief. The stone is a double
one, and I have never met its fellow.

FIG. 54.--AT RICHMOND.

"To Annie Smedley (?), died 1711, aged
90 years."

As companions to this I present a pair of dwarf stones with
full-relief heads of seraphs and cherubs--an agreeable change--from
the same county.

FIG. 55.--AT RIPLEY.

"To Sarah wife of Henry Bower, died 1741.
To Henry Bower, died March 23rd, 1758."

The Rector of the parish passed as I was sketching these interesting
objects, and was surprised to find that he had anything so unusual in
his churchyard.

[Illustration: FIG. 52. LYDD.]

[Illustration: FIG. 53. BERMONDSEY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 54. RICHMOND.]

[Illustration: FIG. 55. RIPLEY.]

[Illustration: FIG. 56. COBHAM.]

[Illustration: FIG. 57. BARNES.]

CHAPTER IV.

PROFESSIONAL GRAVESTONES.

It is more than likely that somewhere will be found a pictorial
accompaniment to the verse which has been often used as an epitaph
for a village blacksmith. I have met with the lines in two or
three versions, of which the following, copied in the churchyard at
Aberystwith, appears to be the most complete:

"My sledge and hammer lie reclined;
My bellows too have lost their wind;
My fire extinct, my forge decay'd,
And in the dust my vice is laid.
My coal is spent, my iron's gone;
My nails are drove, my worck is done."

There are many instances in which the implements of his craft are
depicted upon an artizan's tomb; these also for the most part being
of the eighteenth century. In the churchyard at Cobham, a village made
famous by the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, is a gravestone
recording the death of a carpenter, having at the head a shield
bearing three compasses to serve as his crest, and under it the usual
tools of his trade--square, mallet, compasses, wedge, saw, chisel,
hammer, gimlet, plane, and two-foot rule.

FIG. 56.--AT COBHAM, KENT.

"To Richard Gransden, carpenter, died 13th
March, 1760."

This one may serve as a fair sample of all the trade memorials to
which carpen