rrounded by
well-kept churchyards. During the Georgian period it was common enough
to see churchyards which might have served as pictures of dreariness and
gloom. Webb's collection of epitaphs, published in 1775, is prefaced by
some introductory verses which intimate, without any idea of censure, a
condition of things which was clearly not very exceptional in the
churchyards of towns and populous villages:--

Here nauseous weeds each pile surround,
And things obscene bestrew the ground;
Skulls, bones, in mouldering fragments lie,
All dreadful emblems of mortality.[963]

Secker hopes the clergy of his diocese will keep their churchyards 'neat
and decent, taking the profits of the herbage in such manner as may
rather add beauty to the place.' But he implies that there were many
incumbents who turned their cattle into the sacred precincts, 'to defile
them, and trample down the gravestones; and make consecrated ground such
as you would not suffer courts before your own doors to be.'[964] And
there were some who were not satisfied with turning in their cow and
horse.[965] Practices lingered within the recollections of living men
which would nowadays cause a parochial rebellion. While, for example,
the transition from licence to order was in progress, a certain rector
had sown an unoccupied strip of the burial-ground with turnips. The
archdeacon at his visitation admonished this gentleman not to let him
see turnips when he came there next year. The rebuked incumbent could so
little comprehend these decorous scruples that he supposed Mr.
Archdeacon to be inspired by a zeal for agriculture, and the due
rotation of crops. 'Certainly not, sir,' said he, ''twill be _barley_
next year.'[966]

For the most part, however, there was nothing to give gross offence to
the eye. Gray, in his charming elegy, used words exactly expressive of
the ordinary truth, when he called it 'this neglected spot.' It was
tranquil enough, and suggestive of pensive meditation, shaded perhaps by
rugged elms or melancholy yews; but the grass was probably rank and
untended, and the ground a confused medley of shapeless heaps. Except in
epitaphs, there were no particular signs of tenderness and care; no
flowers, no shrubs, no crosses. The revival of care for our beauty and
comeliness of churches, and the example of well-kept cemeteries, have
combined, since the time of the last of the Georges, to effect an
improvement in the general aspect