THE BINNEY MONUMENT.

THIS monument is situated on Yarrow Path, and the figure upon it is an accurate likeness of the child it is intended to represent. It was executed by Henry Dexter, being taken as the child was lying on her pallet, after death. The hands are crossed upon the breast, and the feet bare, and likewise crossed. The marble upon which this infant figure reposes, is surrounded by four small columns, supporting a slab, on which is an urn. This monument contains the first marble statue executed in Boston, and stands in the lot of C. J. F. Binney, of Boston. The sculptured figure has been lately surrounded by a glass case.

5*

FLOWERS AROUND GRAVES.

FLOWERS have been regarded in all ages as the most appropriate ornaments of a burial place, and have always been strewed upon the bier and grave of a friend, as the most significant offerings of affection. So many tender recollections of flowers are linked with the memory of a beloved friend who has departed from us, that when we see them springing up from a new-made grave, the image of the dead is brought vividly before the mind, and while our sorrows are revived, they are soothed and tranquillized. Flowers are particularly suggestive of the interesting events in the life of a little child. So often has a cluster of wild flowers been the occasion of some of its happiest moments, that the smiles of the living child, and their forms and colors are closely allied; and when we see them adorning the grave of the little slumberer, we feel that its spirit must be more blessed in heaven. The mother who has lost a child is prompted by this sentiment to strew flowers on the grave of the buried one, that its young spirit may see the evidence of the mother's love and the mother's grief, and derive from them the same pleasure which they afforded in its lifetime. But when a flower comes up spontaneously on the little grassy mound, it seems to the disconsolate mother like a tribute of affection from the dead to the living.

It is so common to eulogize flowers as the accompaniments of graves - emblematical as they are of our immortality, and of those virtues which prepare us for the company of higher beings-that we are prone to believe that too many of them cannot be introduced into

a rural cemetery. In accordance with this idea, we see them planted not only around graves, but reared so profusely in borders and parterres, that visitors sometimes forget to observe anything but these dazzling horticultural exhibitions. In admitting this profusion, not all persons are aware that they destroy the poetic expression of the flowers. A single violet appearing on the rising mound of a grave, in a country churchyard, never fails to impress the beholder with a pleasing sentiment. It is a talisman that awakens a crowd of delightful images. But it is doubtful whether any such effect would be produced by a glittering row of petunias, pinks, and calceolarias in a spaded border near the grave. Their charm is lost in their profusion. Such a display is worse than a blank, because it destroys the effect of the little azure tufts of violets, that have come up spontaneously on the green mound.

A friend, who was far from being a sentimentalist, once showed me, with melancholy delight, a little flower of the white-weed, that had blossomed upon the newmade grave of an infant son. He said but few words on the occasion, but I could perceive that he set a high value upon the flower that seemed to him, undoubtedly, like a free offering of nature, who, with unseen hand, had reared it upon the grave, to memorialize the innocence of the child, who had been thus prematurely seized by death. I have no doubt that he derived more pleasure from this single flower than he would from a greater number. Its solitary character caused it to be more readily identified with the lost infant. When rambling in a wood, we stop to admire a solitary geranium, under the shadow of a broad-leaved fern, while we take no notice of the gaudy millions of flowers that grow in the open field.

After the burial of a friend, were a little wood-sparrow to perch daily on a bush by the side of his grave, and sing there his morning and evening lays, we should be delighted with this spontaneous tribute to the memory of the dead. Should any one, taking a hint from this romantic incident, carry out a canary bird, and hang its cage on the branch of a tree that extended over the grave of a friend, that it might, like the wild bird, sing the requiem of the departed, the effect would be more ludicrous than poetical. Affection, that loves to see the dead surrounded with images borrowed from nature and the skies, cannot be thus cheated by its own artifices.

There is a very simple and practicable method by which flowers might be made to grow upon a new-made grave, without resorting to cultivation. This is to procure the turfs that are to be placed upon the surface of the mound, from some wild pasture that is sprinkled with violets, anemones, columbines, and other flowers, which are not too rank in their growth to injure the smooth appearance of the turf. The little wildings of the wood and the pasture are the evidence that we are in the presence of nature. We feel, while we behold them unmixed with the artificial flowers of the florist, that we are treading upon nature's own ground, and we are led to pleasing meditations, which the scenes of a voluptuous flower garden could never inspire. There is an emotion of cheerful solitude felt in the midst of a field of wild flowers, that causes it to seem to a religious mind, the intermediate ground between the busy world of man and the world of spirits; and I am persuaded that the charm of some of our old graveyards is intimately connected with this sentiment.

In a garden we look for beauty; and we are satisfied if our eyes are affected with the voluptuous sensations