USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Guide to Laurel Hill Cemetery, near Philadelphia, with illustrations > Part 6
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products of Mr. Thom's chisel, from American stonc, and are alike creditable to his genius and skill.
How faithfully the sculptor has embodied the description of the author, may best be seen by reference to the intro- ductory chapter of the tale of Old Mortality.
The figure of Sir Walter is pronounced by competent judges an excellent likeness ; the head is after the bust of Chantrey, and the remainder of the figure is taken partly from the best prints, and partly from Mr. Thom's own personal recollections.
The Managers of the Cemetery, in placing these figures on the grounds, had in view the possibility of cmbodying the idea that Laurel Hill is to be permanent; as Old Mortality loved to repair defaced 'tombstones, so the originators of the plan of the Cemetery hope it may be the study of their successors to keep the place in per- petual repair, and to transmit it undefaced to a distant date.
The following extract from the National Gazette, is happily worded .- " The Laurel Hill Cemetery has lately been adorned by two very significant and appropriate statues-one of Sir Walter Scott, represented sitting on a tombstone, talking to Old Mortality, who is engaged in his pious and patriotic occupation of bringing into fresh relief the decayed and dubious inscription on the grave of u Covenanter, happily emblematic of the care bestowed on the enclosures and vaults ; his little pony is also repre- sented. These statues are from the chisel of that exquisite.
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genius, the Burns of sculpture, Thom. There sits Sir Walter, in his ordinary dress, and with his stout spiral walking-cane in his hand. The representation is superbly fine; life, soul, genius-all are embodied. The coat, vest and neckcloth, are as natural as if they were from the hands of an Edinburgh tailor, and Souter Johnnie could not have made a more natural pair of heavy boots. This is the only statue extant, representing Sir Walter in modern costume. Old Mortality has a face of magically real and rich expression ; his position, general appearance, and dress, are of correspondent perfection with those of the author himself. The faithful quadruped, except that the sculptor has made him sleek, according to the tasteful license of the art, would pass for the original portrait. All the details of his primitive gear are presented with rare fidelity."
It was the pious enthusiasm of a Scottish pilgrim to revisit the graves of his country's martyrs, and freshen the record of their virtues, their suffering, and glorious deaths. His pilgrimage was from churchyard to church- yard, and when his eye rested on the fading memorials of those who had virtuously lived and bravely died, his humble industry was ready to stop the progress of the de- cay and trace anew the epitaphs of the dead.
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THE PRELIMINARY CHAPTER OF OLD MORTALITY.
" Most readers," says the manuscript of Mr. Pattieson, " must have witnessed with delight the joyous burst which attends the dismissing of a village-school on a fine summer evening. . The buoyant spirit of childhood, repressed with so much difficulty during the tedious hours of discipline, may then be seen to explode, as it were, in shout, and song, and frolic, as the little urchins join in groups on their play.ground, and arrange their matches of sport for the evening. But there is one indi- vidual who partakes of the relief afforded by the moment of dismission, whose feelings are not so obvious to the eye of the spectator, or so apt to receive his sympathy. I mcan the teacher himself, who, stunned with the hum, and suffocated with the closeness of his school-room, has spent the whole day (himself against a host) in control- - ling petulance, exciting indifference to action, 'striving to enlighten stupidity, and labouring to soften. obstinacy ; and whose very powers of intellect have been confounded by hearing the same dull lesson repeated 'a hundred times by rote, and only varied by the various blunders of the reciters. Even the flowers of classic genius, with which his solitary fancy is most gratified, have been rendered degraded, in his imagination, by their connexion with tears, with errors, and with punishment ; so that the Eclogues of Virgil and Odes of Horace are each insepa- rably allied in association with the sullen figure or
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monotonous recitation of some blubbering school-boy. If to these mental distresses are added a delicate frame of body, and a mind ambitious of some higher distinction than that of being the tyrant of childhood, the reader may have some slight conception of the relief which a solitary walk, in the cool of a fine summer evening, affords to the head which has ached, and the nerves which have been shattered, for so many hours, in plying the irksome task of public instruction.
" To me these evening strolls have been the happiest hours of an unhappy life ; and if any gentle reader shall find pleasure in perusing these lucubrations, I am not un- willing he should know, that the plan of them has been usually traced in those moments, when relief from toil and clamour, combined with the quiet scenery around me, has disposed my mind to the task of composition.
" 'My chief haunt, in these hours of golden leisure, is 1 the banks of the small stream, which, winding through a ' lone vale of green bracken,' passes in front of the village school-house of Gandercleugh. For the first quarter of a mile, perhaps, I may be disturbed from my meditations in order to return the scrape, or doffed bonnet, of such strag- glers among my pupils as fish for trout and minnows in the little brook, or seek rushes and wild flowers by its mar- gin. But beyond the space I have mentioned, the juvenile anglers do not, after sunset, voluntarily extend their excur- sions. The cause is, that farther up the narrow valley, and in a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep, heathy bank, there is a deserted burial-ground, which the
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-little cowards are fearful of approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the place has an inexpressible charm. It has long been the favourite termination of my walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and probably at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal pilgrimage .*
" It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feel- ing attached to a burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description. Having been very little ( used for many years, the few hillocks which rise above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The monuments, of which there are about seven or eight, are half sunk in the ground, and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank-springing grass forces upon our imagination the remnants of mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and the harebell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the dew of heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degra- ding or disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are before us ; but they are softened
* Note by Mr. Jedediah Clieishbotham :- That I kept my plight in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented friend, appeareth from a handsome headstone, erected at my proper charges on this spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter Pattieson, with the date of his nativity and sepulture; : together also with a testimony of his merits, attested by myself, as his superior and patron .- J. C.
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and deprived of their horror by our distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection that they have once been what we now are, and that, as their relics are now identified with their mother earth, ours shall, at some future period, undergo the same trans- formation. ยป
" Yet, although the moss has been collected on the most modern of these humble tombs, during four generations of mankind, the memory of some of those who sleep beneath them is still held in revered remembrance. It is truc, that upon the largest, and, to an antiquary, the most inte- resting monument of the group, which bears the effigies of a doughty knight in his hood of mail, with his, shield hanging on his breast, the armorial bearings are defaced by timc, and a few worn out letters may be read at the pleasure of the decipherer, Dns. Johan - - - de - 2- Hamel, - or Johan -- - de Lamel - And it is also true, that of an another tomb, richly sculptured with an ornamental cross, mitre, and pastoral staff, tradition' can only aver, that a certain nameless bishop lies interred there. But upon other two stones which lie beside, may still be read in rude prose and ruder rhyme, the history of those who sleep beneath them. They belong, we are assured by the epitaph, to the class of persecuted Presbyterians who af- forded a melancholy subject for history in the time of Charles II., and his successor .* In' returning from the
* James, Seventh King of Scotland of that name, and Second according to the numeration of the kings of England .- J. C.
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battle of Pentland Hills, a party of the insurgents had been attacked in this glen by a small detachment of the king's troops, and three or four either killed in the skir- mish, or shot after being made prisoners, as rebels taken with arms in their hands. The peasantry continue to at- tach to the tombs of those victims of prelacy an honour which they do not render to 'more splendid mausoleums ; and when they point them out to their sons, and narrate the fate of the sufferers, usually. conclude, by exhorting them to be ready, should times call for it, to resist to the death in the cause of civil and religious liberty, like their brave forefathers.
" Although I am far from venerating the peculiar tenets 1 asserted by those who call themselves the followers of those men, and whose intolerance and narrow-minded bigotry are at least conspicuous as their devotional zeal, yet it is without depreciating the memory of those sufferers, many of whom united the independent sentiments of a Hamp- den with the suffering zeal of a Hooper or a Latimer. On the other hand, it would be unjust to forget, that many even of those who had been most active in crushing what they conceived the rebellious and seditious spirit of those unhappy wanderers, displayed themselves, when called upon to suffer for their political and religious opinions, the same daring and devoted zeal, tinctured in their case, with chivalrous loyalty, as in the former with republican enthusiasm. It has often been remarked of the Scottish character, that the stubbornness with which it is moulded shows most to advantage in adversity, when it seems akin
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to the native sycamore of the hills, which scorns to be biassed in its mode of growth, even by the influence of the prevailing wind, but, shooting its branches with equal boldness in every direction, shows no weather-side to the storm, and may be broken, but can never be bended. It must be understood that I speak of my countrymen as they fall under my own observation. When in foreign countries, I have been informed that they are more docile. But it is time to return from this digression.
" One summer evening, as in a stroll, such as I have de- scribed, I approached this deserted mansion of the dead, I was somewhat surprised to hear sounds distinct from those which usually soothe its solitude, the gentle chiding, namely, of the brook, and the sighing of the wind in the boughs of three gigantic ash-trees, which mark the ceme- tery. The clink of a hammer was, on this occasion, dis- tinctly heard ; and I entertained some alarm that a march- dike, long meditated by the two proprietors whose estates were divided by my favourite brook, was about to be drawn up the glen, in order to substitute its rectilinear deformity for the graceful winding of the natural boundary. As I approached, I was agreeably undeceived. An old man was seated upon the monument of the slaughtered Pres- byterians, and busily employed in deepening, with his chisel, the letters of the inscription, which, announcing, in scriptural language, the promised blessings of fu- turity to be the lot of the slain, anathematized the mur- derers with corresponding violence. A blue bonnet of unusual dimensions covered the gray hairs of the pious
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workman. His dress was a large old-fashioned coat, of coarse cloth called hoddin-gray, usually worn by the elder peasants, with waistcoat and breeches of the same ; and the whole suit, though still in decent repair, had obviously seen a train of long service. . Strong clouted shoes studded with hob-nails, and gramoches or leggins, made of thick black cloth, completed his equipment. Beside him fed among the graves a pony, the companion of his journey, whose extreme whiteness as well as its projectiog bones and hollow eyes indicated its antiquity. It was harnessed in the most simple manner, with a pair of branks, a hair tether or halter, and a sunk, or cushion of straw, instead of bridle and saddle. A canvass pouch hung round the neck of the animal, for the purpose, probably, of containing the rider's tools, and anything else he might have occasion to carry with him. Although I had never seen the old man before, yet, from the singularity of his employment, and the style of his equipage, I had no difficulty in recognising a religious itinerant whom I had often heard talked of, and who was known in various parts of Scotland by the title of Old Mortality.
" Where this man was born or what was his real name, I have never been able to learn; nor are the motives which made him desert his home, and adopt the erratic mode of life which he pursued, known to me except very generally. According to the belief of most people, he was a native of either the county of Dumfries or Galloway, and lineally descended from some of those champions of the Covenant, whose deeds and sufferings
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were his favourite theme. He is said to have held, at one period of his life, a small moorland farm ; but whether from pecuniary losses or domestic misfortune, he had long' renounced that and every other gainful calling. In the language of Scripture, he left his house, his home, and his kindred, and wandered about until the day. of his death, , a period of nearly thirty years.
" During this long pilgrimage, the pious enthusiast regulated his circuit so as annually to visit the graves of the unfortunate Covenanters who suffered by the sword, or by the executioner, during the reigns of the two last monarchs of the Stuart line. These are the most numerous in the western districts of Ayr, Galloway, and Dumfries ; but they are also to be found in other parts of Scotland, wherever the fugitives had fought, or fallen, or suffered by military or civil execution. Their tombs are often apart from all human habitation, in the remote moors and wilds to which the wanderers had fled, for conceal- ment. But wherever they existcd, Old Mortality was sure to visit them when his annual round brought them within his reach. In the most lonely recesses of the mountains, the moorfowl-shooter has been often surprised to find him buised in cleaning the moss from the gray stones, renewing with his chisel the half-defaced inscrip- tions, and repairing the emblems of death with which these, simple monuments are usually adorned. Motives of the most sincere though fanciful devotion induced the old man to dedicate so many years of existence to perform this tribute to the memory of the deceased warriors of the
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church. He considered himself as fulfilling a sacred duty, while renewing to the eyes of posterity the decaying emblems of the zeal and sufferings of their forefathers, and thereby trimming, as it were, the beacon-light, which was to warn future generations to defend their religion even unto blood.
" In all his wanderings, the old pilgrim never seemed to need, or was known to accept pecuniary assistance. It is true his wants were very few ; for wherever he went, he found ready quarters in the house of some Cameronian of his own sect, or of some other religious person. The hospitality which was reverentially paid to him he always acknowledged, by repairing the gravestones (if there existed any) belonging to the family or ancestors of his host. As the wanderer was usually to be seen bent on his pious task within the precincts of some country churchyard, or reclined on the solitary tombstone among the heath, disturbing the plover and the black-cock with the clink of his chisel and mallet, with his old white pony grazing by his side, he acquired from his converse among the dead the popular appellation of Old Mortality.
" The character of such a man could have in it little connexion even with innocent gaiety. ' Yet, among those of his own religious persuasion he is reported to have been cheerful. The descendants of persecutors, or those whom he supposed guilty of entertaining similar tenets, and the scoffers at religion by whom he was sometimes assailed, he usually termed the generation of vipers. Conversing with others, he was grave and sententious,
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not without a cast of severity. But he is said never to have been observed to give way to violent passion except- ing upon one occasion, when a mischievous truant-boy defaced with a stone the nose of a cherub's face which the old man was engaged in retouching. I am in general a sparer of the rod, notwithstanding the maxim of Solomon, for which school-boys have little reason to thank his memory ; but on this occasion I deemed it proper to show that I did not hate the child. 'But I must return to the circumstance attending my first interview with this interesting enthusiast.
" In accosting Old Mortality, I did not fail to pay respect to his years and his principles, beginning my address by a respectful apology for interrupting his labours. The old man intermitted. the operation of the chisel, took off his, spectacles and wiped them, then replacing them on his nose, acknowledged my courtesy by a suitable return. Encouraged by his affability, I intruded upon him some questions concerning the sufferers on whose monuments he was now employed. To talk of the exploits of the Covenanters was the delight, as to repair their monuments was the business of his life. He was profuse in the communication of all the minute information which he had collected concerning them, their wars and their wanderings. One would almost have supposed he must have been their contemporary, and have actually beheld the passages which he related, so much had he identified his feelings and opinions with theirs, and so much had his narratives the circumstantiality of an eye-witness. -
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"' We,' he said, in a tone of exultation, 'we are the only true whigs. Carnal men have assumed that tri- umphant appellation, following him whose kingdom is of this world. Which of them would sit six hours on a wet hill-side to hear a godly sermon ? I trow an hour o't wad staw them. They are ne'er a hair better than them thats hame na to take upon themsells the persecuting name of blude-thirsty tories. Self-seekers all of them, strivers after wealth, power, and worldly ambition, and forgetters alike of what has been dree'd and done by the mighty men who stood in the gap in the great day of wrath. Nae wonder they dread the accomplishment of what was spoken by the mouth of the worthy Mr. Peden (that precious servant of the Lord, none of whose words fell to the ground,) that the French monzies sall rise as fast in the glens of Ayr, and the kenns of Galloway, as ever the Highlandmen did in 1677. And now they are gripping to the bow and to the spear, when they suld be mourning for a sinfu' land and a broken covenant.'
"Soothing the old man by letting his peculiar opinions pass without contradiction, and anxious to prolong con- versation with so singular a character, I prevailed upon him to accept that hospitality which Mr. Cleishbotham is always willing to extend to those who need it. In our way to the schoolmaster's house, we called at the Wallace Inn, where I was pretty certain I should find my patron about that hour of the evening. After a courteous inter- change of civilities, Old Mortality was with difficulty prevailed upon to join his host in a single glass of liquor,
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and that, on condition that he should be permitted to name the pledge, which he prefaced with a grace of about five minutes, and then, with bonnet doffed and eyes uplifted, drank to the memory of those heroes of the Kirk, who had uplifted her banner upon the mountains. As no persuasion could prevail upon him to extend his conviviality to a second cup, my patron accompanied him home, and accommodated him in the prophet's chamber, as it is his pleasure to call the closet which holds a spare bed, and which is frequently a place of retreat for the poor traveller.
" The next day I took leave of Old Mortality, who seemed affected by the unusual attention with which I had cultivated his acquaintance and listened to his conver- sation. After he had mounted, not without difficulty, the old white pony, he took me by the hand and said, 'The
? blessing of our Master be with you, young man ! My hours are like the ears of the latter harvest, and your days are yet in the spring ; and yet you may be gathered into the garner of mortality before me, for the sickle of death - cuts down the green as oft as the ripe, and there is a colour in your cheek, that, like the bud of the rose, serveth oft to hide the worm of corruption. Wherefore labour as one who knoweth not when his master calleth. And if it be my lot to return to this village after ye are gane hame to your ain place, these auld withered hands will frame a stane of memorial, that your name may not perish from among the people.'
" I thanked Old Mortality for his kind intentions in my
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behalf, and I heaved a sigh, not I think of regret so much as of resignation, to think of the chance that I might soon require his good offices. But though, in all human probability, he did not err in supposing that my span of life may be abridged in youth, he had over-esti- mated the period of his own pilgrimage on earth. It is now some years since he has been missed in all his usual haunts, while moss, lichen, and deer-hair, are fast covering those stones, to cleanse which had been the business of his life. About the beginning of this century he closed his mortal toils, being found on the highway near Lock- erby, in Dumfries-shire, exhausted, and just expiring. The old white pony, the companion of all his wanderings, was standing by the side of his dying master. There was found about his person a sum of money sufficient for his decent interment, which serves to show that his death was in no ways hastened by violence or by want. The common people still regard his memory with great re- spect; and many are of opinion, that the stones which he repaired will not again require the assistance of the chisel. They even assert, that on the tombs where the manner of the martyr's murder is recorded, their names have remained indelibly legible since the death of Old Mortality, while those of the persecutors, sculptured on the same monuments, have been entirely defaced."
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APPENDIX.
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MISCELLANIES,
SELECTED FROM VARIOUS PUBLICATIONS RESPECTING LAUREL HILL, INTERMENT IN CITIES, ETC. ETC. -
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THE YOUNG.
When into dust, like dewy flowers departed, From our dim paths the bright and lovely fade, The fair in form, the pure, the gentle-hearted, Whose looks within the breast a Sabbath made, How like a whisper on the inconstant wind The memory of their voices stirs the mind !
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We hear the sigh, the song, the fitful laughter That from their lips, in balm, were wont to flow, When Hope's beguiling lips they hurried after, And drank her siren music long ago, While Joy's bright harp to sweetest lays was strung, And poured rich numbers for the loved and young. ALBANUS SMITH. Haverford, 3d mo. 8th, 1839.
IN ancient times, as is well known, it was the custom to bury the dead beyond the walls of towns and cities
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and among the Greeks and Romans they were frequently interred by the waysides.
I could here pause with pleasure, and invite the reader to indulge with me in contemplation of the advantages which must have attended such a practice. We might ruminate upon the beauty which the monuments, thus placed, must have borrowed from the surrounding images of nature-from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream running perhaps within sight or hearing, from the beaten road stretching its weary length hard by. [How descriptive of the Cemetery this is, let those testify who have fre- quently visited it.] Many tender similitudes must these objects have presented to the mind of the traveller leaning upon one of the tombs, or reposing in the coolness of its shade, whither he had halted from weariness, or in eom- pliance with the invitation, " Pause, Traveller," so often found upon the monuments. And to its epitaph also must have been supplied strong appeals to visible appearances . or immediate impressions, lively and affeeting analogies of life as a journey, death as a sleep overcoming the tired wayfarer-of misfortune as a storm that falls suddenly upon him-of beauty as a flower that passeth away, or of innocent pleasure as one that may be gathered-of virtue that standeth firm as a roek against the beating waves- of hope undermined insensibly like the poplar by the side of the river that has fed it, or blasted in a moment like a pine tree by the stroke of lightning upon the mountain top-of admonitions and heart-stirring remembranees, like a refreshing breeze that comes without warning, or
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