GARDNER BREWER'S MONUMENT.

This monument is situated opposite the south side of the Chapel, and is one of the most beautiful productions of art in Mount Auburn. It is in pointed style, and of fine white marble.

This monument bears the following inscription :

GARDNER,

ONLY SON OF

GARDNER AND MARY BREWER,

DIED AUGUST 19, 1857. AGED 15 YEARS 8 MONTHS.

ANCIENT FUNEREAL PRACTICES.

SELECTED AND COMPILED.

NOTWITHSTANDING the melancholy gloom which the ancients cast over all their ideas of death and the grave, both in their moral and poetical writings, they appear in reality to have endeavored as much as possible to lighten those impressions, and place at a distance those dark phantoms of the imagination. Accordingly, the deep and solemn sadness attending our burials; the black shades of yews and cypresses; the dreary charnel house and vaulted sepulchres; the terrific appendages of mouldering bones and winding'sheets;

"The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave,

The deep, damp vault, the darkness, and the worm,"

which, from custom, form so great a part of the horror we feel at the thoughts of death, were to them unknown. The corpse consumed by funereal fires, and the ashes enclosed in urns, and deposited in the earth, presented no offensive object or idea. Besides, to dissipate the sorrow of the living, or, perhaps, with a desire to gratify the spirit of the dead, wines were poured and flowers scattered over the grave. These offices were the grateful tributes of love and veneration. The manes of the deceased, still wandering about the place of interment, might, perhaps, partake of the libation and enjoy the odor; at least his memory would be honored, and his spirit delighted.

Whatever may have been the original purpose of these ceremonies, we find repeated allusions to them in the poets. Anacreon mentions the rose as being particularly grateful. The tomb of Achilles was adorned with the

amaranth, the flower of immortality. Electra complains that her father's grave had never been decked with myrtle boughs. Anacreon again beautifully alludes to the same custom:

Why do we precious ointment shower?
Nobler wines why do we pour?
Beauteous flowers why do we shed
Upon the monuments of the dead ?
Nothing they but dust can show,
Or bones that hasten to be so.
Crown me with roses while. I live;

Now your wines and ointments give.
After death I nothing crave,

Let me alive my pleasures have;
All are stoics in the grave.

COWLEY.

We have an epigram by Leonidas, exactly to the same purpose:

Seek not to glad these senseless stones,
With fragrant ointments, rosy wreaths;
No warmth can reach my mouldering bones
From lustral fire, that vainly breathes.
Now let me revel while I
may,

The wine that o'er my tomb is shed,
Mixes with earth and turns to clay;

No honors can delight the dead.

Hence we may infer that offerings of this nature were made with a view of gratifying the deceased; and it seems to have been a very prevailing notion among many nations besides the Greeks, that men after death retain the same passions and appetites that distinguished them when living. In Lycophron, a mountain is placed be