THE NECROPOLIS. 95 through the service, were compelled to bring with them stools a very needless infliction of want of gallantry, on the part of great hulking fellows, towards their better halves. The worship of the women was also fettered by other hampering laws. Their plaids, for example, were not allowed to be placed over their heads, after the Scotch fashion, and, if they thus transgressed, the plaids were to be properly adjusted by the beadles, who were furnished with staffs, and whose descendants still linger in certain churches in England. One of the chief points in this south-west view of the Cathedral is, that it is so closely backed up by the Necropolis, which forms a most striking and appropriate background to the view. I will bring my Glasgow jottings' to a close with a description of this cemetery, from whose fir-crowned top we shall have reached the highest elevation of the city, and shall gain an admirable panoramic view of the second city in the United Kingdom, whose importance and many objects of interest have caused me to linger somewhat longer than I had purposed over this portion of my Tour in Tartan-Land. CHAPTER IX. A SCOTCH NECROPOLIS. The Bridge of Sighs—The Necropolis Beauty and appropriate- THERE 6 HERE are three cemeteries in Glasgow, of which the chief is that called 'The Necropolis.' Bristling with columns and monuments, over which that of Knox stands supreme, it crowns the rugged 'Fir-park Hill,' a block of rock that rises precipitously to the height of nearly 300 feet, and on whose summit Druids are supposed to have worshipped. Far below, a small stream, called the Molendinar burn,' runs rapidly through the deep ravine that separates the Necropolis from the high plateau on which the Cathedral is built. A lofty bridge, bearing the poetical name of 'The Bridge of Sighs,' spans the ravine, and connects the Cathedral Yard with the lower portion of the Necropolis. A lodge guards the approach to the bridge, and Italian gateways are erected at the immediate entrance of the Cemetery. Carriage roads wind round the hill, and tortuous footpaths traverse it in every direction. Surely there never was a fitter spot for a place of burial. In the city, and yet not of A SCOTCH NECROPOLIS. 46 97 it-far up above its strife and bustle-close beside the grey cathedral, with the shadow of its tall spire to travel over its graves at the setting of the sun-everything there to tell of the mortality that is swallowed up in life, and of the hopes that wait on those who are laid within religion's shade-this City of the Dead stands in the midst of the City of the Living; the precincts of the grave connected with the world of life and motion by the Bridge of Sighs-a type of that sorrow that divides the dead from the living. The ground has been admirably planned and laid out, and is most carefully kept. Trees, shrubs, and flowers charm the sight, and afford a very pleasing contrast to the hideousness that was made to attend upon the grave during the last century and a half, when the churchyards were foul with unsightly weeds, and the tomb-stones bore luxuriant crops of death's-heads and cross-bones, or heathen emblems of inverted torches and funereal urns. And if those urns meant anything at all, and were designed to convey to the mourner or spectator any touching meaning or salutary lesson, they must perforce have meant that the bodies of the beloved John Smith, or lamented Thomas Jones, had not been decently interred in the ordinary way, but had been consumed by fire, and the ashes placed and preserved in urns by the afflicted and inconsolable widows. The cremation of Shelley was a reality; but this cremation of Smith and Jones is a stupid fiction, imagined by the stone-mason and propagated by the widows. Not that heathenisms are wanting in this Glasgow Necropolis, as in every other grave-yard. To begin with, the word 'Necropolis' is itself a heathenish term, unsuitable to the old Saxon 'God's Acre,' 'the Churchyard,' or even to the Christian-Greek 'Cemetery;' and the H heathenism of the name is fully borne out by the paganism of many of the monuments. The Northern professors of the Christian faith are not a whit behind their English brethren in setting up over their graves (for many erect their monuments in their life-time) tombs bearing those various pagan emblems, that the Roman or Grecian statuary would have raised to their memory many years before the Christian era. We transact much of the world's business in buildings modelled after the edifices of Greece and Rome, and when we are laid in the last little building of all, the emblems of a Greek or Roman faith mark the spot where we have received a Christian burial. It is as though the study of the classics had perverted us to the paganism of classical times, and that when we died in our error, our relatives so gloried in our shame that they were desirous to point it out to the world so long as our tomb-stones should endure. Abstract virtues, and deities in whom men have disbelieved all their lives, are made to cluster about their tombs, and weep over them as though they had been their dearest friends. The eminent Christian, who has largely helped in the work of reclaiming idolatrous nations from their worship of false gods, puts off his earthly tabernacle, and is taken to his last home, and straightway a legion of false deities are summoned from their Pantheon to hold a stony conclave over his remains. Neptune with his dolphins waits upon the sailor; Victory receives the dying soldier in her arms; Fame lustily blows the trumpet of one who would have been the last to do such a thing in his life-time; History, Minerva, and Eloquence attend upon the senator; Wisdom and Justice uphold the righteous judge; Liberty and Peace visit the dying statesman; the Lyric Muse deposits a wreath of laurel upon the poet's brow; Benevolence presents her nest of young pelicans to the charitable lady; Hercules symbolises the lexicographer; the bony Skeleton uplifts his dart; Time, with his wings and scythe, breaks the javelin of Death; Tritons, Nymphs, Graces, Genii, little boys with wings, Britannia with the British Lion, Valour, Deceit, Oppression, Clio, Bellona, Pallas, Earth, Ocean, Prudence, Fortitude, Tragedy, Comedy, Anarchy, Astronomy, and even Dan Cupid*-who does not know all these ladies and gentlemen? What cathedral or abbey throughout the length and breadth of the land is freed from their expensive and heathenish mourning over the tombs of humble Christians? We are truly taught, that Money on tombs is vainly spent ; A man's good name is his best monument. But cemeteries hold out the opportunity for self-glorification, and for advertisements cut in stone; and delight to erect over some worthy tallow-chandler, who, by dint of industry, has raised himself to the coveted rank of alderman, and retired from business full of honours but empty of aspirates, something classic, sweetly classic,' and adorn the grave of this pious Protestant with figures of heathen deities, to whom he never paid even scholastic worship in life, and with whom he would feel considerably shocked, if he could see them All standing out naked in the open air, around the monument that is inscribed with his name. Most of these monuments speak rather of life than death. * Witness, for example, Rysbrach's monument to the Earls of Stanhope in Westminster Abbey, where Cupid is represented as resting upon a shield. |