DEDICATION

OP THE

BELLEFONTAINE CEMETEM;

ADDRESS

OF

Professor Post

AND OTHER PROCEEDINGS ON THAT OCCASION!

ALSO, THE

Rules and Regulations,

SUGGESTIONS TO LOT OWNERS,

AND

Charter of the Rural Cemetery Association.

“I am a stranger and sojourner with you; give me a possession of a burying-place with
you that I may bury my dead out of my sight.1

“And the field and the cave, which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field ;
that were in all the borders round about; were made sure unto Abraham for a possession.”

ST. LOUIS.

PRINTED BY T.W.USTICK.
1850.But the grave of those we loved — what a place for meditation ! There it is that
we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and gentleness, and the thou-
sand endearments lavished upon us, almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of inti-
macy; there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn awful tenderness of
the parting scene.

****** *******

Then weave thy chaplet of flowers, and strew the beauties of nature about the

grave ; console thy broken spirit if thou canst, with these tender, yet futile tributes
of regret; and take warning by the bitterness of this—thy contrite alHiction over the
dead—and henceforth be more faithful and affectionate in the discharge of thy duties
to the living.	Washington Irving.D> B; Pi I; <Ç A> ï:0,N

OF

^»îwîîîï-ij.

The Rural Cemetery Association having progressed
in the improvement of their grounds far enough to
justify their opening them to the public, resolved to
designate the grounds as the Bellefontaine Cemetery,
and to have them dedicated with appropriate ceremo-
nies, on the 15th day of May, 1850.

The Committee of Arrangements invited Professor
Post to deliver the address, who kindly assented,
although pressed by the labor of other important en-
gagements.

The different benevolent societies, and the clergy of
the city, were invited to attend. The following notice
of the Dedication is taken from the St. Louis Intelli-
gencer, and is from the pen of the Junior Editor, A. S.
Mitchell, Esq.

Agreeably to the published arrangements of the Com-
mittee, this beautiful Cemetery was dedicated on yes-
terday, with appropriate ceremonies. The day was
all that nature could have made it, or man desired it
for such an occasion. The sun shone brightly, and
the joyous face of a lovely spring-day smiled on all the
scene.

A very large company of our citizens were present,exhibiting by their interest in the exercises, their
appreciation of the sacred object which called them
together. About 12 o’clock the Odd Fellows, the last
of the procession, reached the grounds, clad in their
rich regalia, marching in order, and accompanied with
a band of musicians.

The Committee on the part of the Cemetery Associ-
ation had made ample and convenient arrangements on
a Northern slope, immediately West and in sight of
the Receiving Tomb, where the ceremonies were con-
ducted.

At 12 o’clock, the concourse was called to order by
John F. Darby, Esq., the President of the Association.
A short and very beautiful prayer of Invocation was
offered up by Rev. Dr. Bullard. The twenty-third
chapter of the book of Genesis, commencing at the
third verse, was read by the Rev. E. C. Hutchinson ;
after which, a prayer of Dedication was offered by the
Rev. William G. Elliot.

The Choir now sung a most beautiful and appro-
priate hymn. Prof. Post, the selected orator of the
day, then proceeded to deliver his address. We shall
attempt no description of his effort. It was worthy
of the man and the occasion. No happier selection of
a speaker could have been made. It was one of the
most eloquent and beautiful productions it has ever
been our pleasure to hear.

After the address of Prof. Post, the Choir sang an
Ode, and the prayer of Benediction was pronounced
by Rev. Dr. Jeter.

Many of our citizens took this occasion to visit one
of the noblest works our people have yet originated.
The Bellefontaine Cemetery marks a gratifying pro-gress in the tastes and feelings of society. The loca-
tion of the Cemetery grounds is beautiful, in the
extreme. They afford scope for every variety and
extent of improvement and decoration. They lie
about five miles north of the Court House, and embrace
about one hundred and thirty-eight acres. The drive
to the Cemetery will ultimately be one of the most
interesting leading from the city.

The projected improvements of the grounds are
extensive, and in admirable taste. The miles of ave-
nues, walks and ways, through the grounds, leading
across plateaus, and over hills, and through embowered
dales, and presenting every conceivable view and
aspect of beauty of which the grounds are susceptible,
will yet preserve a simplicity of arrangement and sym-
metry of design, that will ever charm the appreciating
visitor.

The lines are run. The stakes are set. The site
for the great City of the Dead is marked off and dedi-
cated. How populous will be that City ! Thousands
are rushing to its hospitable graves, and every day,
from this time onward, will add to its pale population.
A joyful day saw this great city founded. Nature
clothed the scene in holiday attire, and gave one last
day of brightness to the soil which is henceforth to be
“ God’s garden” of rest to the dead, but a sad Geth-
semane to the living. The sun shone brightly; the
oak and the elm trees opened their bursting buds and
unfolded their young leaves to the genial sun ; the
green grass sprung fresh and glistening under feet,
enameled with the delicate blue-bell and wild heart’s-
ease; the birds sang sweetly their spring-tide songs,
and the zephyrs dallied over all the happy scene. Thatconsecrated ground will never be so blythe and happy
again. Tears will henceforth water its sod. Grief
will hang a mantle of gloom over all its precincts.
The heavy feet of human sorrow will tread slowly, but
incessantly, its bosom. But amid all its melancholy,
there will spring up hopes reachihg beyond this earth
—beyond the grave. The “ Garden of God ” will
produce the fruit of immortality!

’Tis hallowed ground, whereof the sod
Is planted by the hand of God,

With flowers that blossom o’er the tomb,

To wear for aye, immortal bloom.

“ God’s garden” spreads its beauties here,

His Spirit haunts the sacred place—

The gate-way to a heav’nlier sphere,

When man hath run his weary race.^Vbbvcss of professor ftost.

Fellow Citizens: —

We are come hither to-day on no ordinary errand. No
civic festivity, or literary reunion, no achievement of
Commerce, or joy of Victory, gathers us this day amid
these scenes of nature, this green and wooded seclusion.

We are come, ’tis true, to found a City — of your own
emporium the shadow, the counterpart, the home ; to grow
with its growth, and become populous with its people—yet
a city for no living men, a City for the Dead, we found
this day.

Not in pride come we. In no vain ambition to wrestle
with our mortal state, or rescue these bodies from corrup-
tion, or our names from oblivion. Too well, alas! we
know,

“ Nor storied urn, nor animated bust,

Back to its mansion calls the fleeting breath ;

Nor Honor’s voice provokes the silent dust,

Nor Flattery soothes the dull cold ear of death.”

In no such dream of the children of pride, but as under
a common doom, we come on an errand of love and sorrow.
We come to consecrate a place to the sad proprieties of
grief, the last offices of earthly affection, the holy memo-
ries of the dead, and the repose of the grave — to hallow
a sanctuary for rememberance and love and tears — to
thoughts that walk again life’s pilgrimage with the de-
parted, or see the faces faded and lost from earth, bright-
ening in the smile of God. We come to select the last
home for families, and friends, and forms we love most
dearly. Yea, to choose the place of our own final rest,
where memory, perchance, may drop over our dust the
“tribute of a tear.”

In doing this, and in exhibiting a care for the seemly
bestowment of our dead, we obey a universal feeling of
humanity—a feeling that regards the very form, conse-
2crated by the residence of the soul and the memories of
love, as more than common earth. We ask no more leave
of Philosophy for this sentiment than we do for our tears
over the dead—content to follow the irrepressible impulse
of nature, an instinct of immortality clinging around our
very clay. But we know it is the highest philosophy to
follow the universal and immortal voice of Nature. Her
indications, truer than all logic, always point to beneficent,
though it may be hidden uses.

Moreover, observation teaches us, here, as everywhere,
that violated Nature vindicates herself—a natural retribu-
tion attends on our treatment of the dead. A neglect of
the decencies and pious proprieties of sepulture ever re-
acts disastrously on the manners and tastes, sentiments and
morality, and, finally, on the entire genius of civilization.

But, apart from all philosophy, we love to linger around
the place of our dead, where we looked on the forms we
loved for the last time. Tjiither fondly we oft return, and
sorrow soothes itself with its offering of tears, over their
lone and lowly rest. We love to beautify their last repose,
as though the departed spirit were more quickly conscious
and cognizant around the spot where the companion of its
mortal pilgrimage awaits the resurrection, as though there
it were still sensible to the soothing charm of natural
beauty, or the gentle offices of memory and love. True,
we cannot wake their sleep; they answer us never with voice
or sigh ; still we delight to make their rest beautiful—beau-
tiful with all that nature, and all that art can give ; we would
strew it with flowers, to be tended with gentle fingers, and
bedewed ever with fresh tears ; we would that affection
and honor should speak of them in commemorative marble,
and nature around should wear her benignest and loveliest
aspect.

This feeling springs irrepressible in the mourner’s heart.
At times it seems as though the dead did plead with us not
to be all forgot. Their whisper steals on us in the stilly
night, and their faces, pale and beautiful, gleam on us inthe rising moon — they plead to be left not alone and un-
visited of the living in their cold and lowly bed. We hear
their voices when Spring comes forth, and when the leaves
fall; yea in the glee and glory of life, in the joyous and
genial circle it comes— that gentle entreaty, by the love
we once bore them, that we leave them not all abandoned
now—that still, from time to time, in visits, not too oft, nor
in gloom to darken life, we pay the tribute of a pass-
ing hour, and some mindful tears to those whom living we
loved so well, and whose hearts beat for us so fondly till
they were forever cold. They ask us sometimes to come
where they lie alone, and commune again with the farewell
word and the fading look of love, and the hope of reunion
in realms unvisited of death.

Call it illusion, if we please, this feeling of sympathy
with the dead. It is an illusion no philosophy can dispel.
It springs directly from our conscious, painful dread of
passing forever away from this world of light and life and
love, and having our very thought perishing in bosoms
most dear. In spite of philosophy, Nature still exclaims:

(< Ah ! who to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor left one longing, lingering look behind?

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some pious drops the closing eye requires,

Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.”

Natural taste and sensibility again, plead for the rural
cemetery. A seemly and beautiful sepulture amid the
jostle, and-din, and offences of sight and sound, in the tu-
mult of the city! It is impossible ! In the city church-
yard, on the borders of our crowded and reeking thorough-
fares, ’mid the clang, and clamor, and dust, and the tramp-
ing of feet, and the rattling of wheels, it seems as if the
buried could not rest. We can hardly disabuse the mind
of the painful illusion, that the turmoil of mortal life may
still perturb even the sleepers of the grave. The sensi-bilities of the mourner are shocked by the mingling of
vulgar and profane life with the awe and silence of the
house of death. Meditation flees such scenes — the sanc-
tity of private grief is outraged. The faces of the de-
parted will not come to greet you, and the sensitive spirit
hastes to hide its wound away from the stare and curiosity
of the passing crowd. No, not there — but in seclusion,
silence and solitude, grief loves to seek the face of the
dead, and commune with its memories and hopes : where
the earth, with its stilly life, grows green in its time, and
Spring comes forth with its flowers beautiful and voiceless ;
and Summer passes into a solemn Sabbath glory ; and pen-
sive Autumn throws its seemly shroud of fading loveliness
over the dying year; and the desolate Winter keeps reli-
giously, at least the fitting loneliness and stillness of the
tomb.

We love to seek converse with sorrow and the dead,
where the outer world seems in sympathy with the mourn-
er ; where the trees gather in Gothic solemnity and
Cathedral gloom around the grave; and where Nature,
with her touching similitudes of her own brief bloom, and
transient summer-beauty, of her swift decay and sure re-
newal of life, may image the brief flower of our mortal being;
its hastening decadence and its immortal hope.

In such scenes, where the rose emblems to us our life’s
fleet Summer; and the leaf driven on the Autumn wrind,
images the passing of earthly beauty; and the vernal re-
surrection of nature speaks to man of his own waking from
the Wmter of the tomb ; and the plane, and cypress, and ivy
never sere, may figure the evergreen life of the soul—in
such scenes, the mourner loves to seek the great bosom of
nature, and feels soothed by her mute sympathies.

Grief for the dead, also asks seclusion and isolation. It
shuns the public walk. The stare of the curious crowd
oppresses, profanes, tortures it. It treads its path of sor-
row with no idle gazer. It asks to love and weep alone.It asks a burial place where the landscape, with its natural
variety of surface, and the screen of hill, and dale, and
copse, and thicket, may furnish separate sanctuaries for
sorrow. Our nature, too, asks a place of final rest beside
the forms loved in life. We love to think we shall at
length sleep witli them side by side. To lie down at last
among our kindred—to be “gathered to our fathers,” and
extend the companionship of life and love to the dark and
narrow house, is a wish natural to man. This sentiment
flees the city church-yard with its crowded graves, and
seeks in the rural cemetary for space to group families and
friends in their last long sleep.

These sentiments have, in every age, established burial
places amid the high and tranquil and beautiful places of
nature.

They led the Aborigines to lay the fallen warrior on
some lofty eminence, commanding the wridest outlook and
fairest view of cliff and dale, and majestic forest, and
illimitable prairies, and the sweep of rivers with their
mighty vales, as though the departed might be comforted
in hovering around his tomb by visions imaging the happy
hunting grounds of the far-off Spirit Land. And these lead
the Indian, as lie sets his face in exile towards the distant
West, to turn with saddest longing and lingering look to
the grassy headland, or oak-shaded mound, where lie the
bones of his fathers.

It was these sentiments, seeking secluded, tranquil,
rural, family sepulture, that led the Father of the faithful
to stand up before his dead in the presence of the children
of Heth, and solicit as a burial place the field of Ephron,
“which was in Machpelah before Mamre ; and the cave
which was in the field, with all the trees in the field and in
the borders round about to be made sure unto him forever.”

It was these sentiments that led the dying Jacob, as the
shadows of the long night, mingling with the awful visions
of prophecy, gathered on his parting soul, to turn from thefar-off land of his sojourn, to where the trees of the field
waved over that far-off group of graves, still fresh in
memory, in the cave of Machpelah, and gave commandment
for his own interment beside them. “ For there they buri-
ed Abraham and Isaac and Rebecca, and there he buried
Leah.” The same feeling led the dying Joseph to turn
away from Pyramid and Mausoleum that waited his sepul-
ture, to that rural family burying place, and give com-
mandment concerning his bones—to lay them there with his
fathers. The love of rural sepulture led the Children of
Israel to bury their dead under oaks, on hill-tops and in
valleys and gardens, and made the hill sides and dales
around Jerusalem, a cemetery for the dead, where, amid
those of the multitude, appeared the tombs of prophets and
kings. This led the Egyptian to build his cities of the
dead, apart from the living Thebes and Memphis, across
the Nile, and in forest-shaded glens and gorges of the
mountains, where the Elysian fields of the under world,
with their flowing meadows and mazy beauty, had their
archetype.

The Greek also aimed to group c^eath with the beautiful
in nature and art. Under the embowering plane or
cypress, amid rose and asphodel, lie laid his dead—whither
wandered delightful covered walks and promenades, em-
bellished with temples and altars and statues and trophies,
and marble memorials of departed heroism, wisdom and
genius. The same sentiment the iron Roman also evinced
by his tombs on rural heights, along the public ways, or in
sequestered places in the suburbs, or in the gardens of the
villa, or in vales, beside the shaded and silent stream, or on
the margin of the lone and solemn sea, where some beauti-
ful or simple device, carved on the marble, or emblemed
in flowers, uttered its language to the mourner or the
passer by.

With even the rude Turk it rises to a religious duty, to
decorate, with rural embellishment, the place of his dead.As a monument of this feeling, rises the vast Necropolis of
the Scutari on the Asiatic shore, opposite Constantinople,
and the most interesting object in its vicinity — where the
cypress and plane tree, waving in the fresh breezes of the
Propontis, during the S'ultry months, invite to meditative
repose'and communion with the dead in its cool and
sequestered retreat. A city of the dead, looking in the
face of the living, across the narrow dividing sea, like
death on life—growing with the populousness of the living
city, and the home of its successive generations, but
guarded in sanctity by a universal sentiment of the human
mind, amid war-storms, that have repeatedly sacked the
city of the Ciesars, the Caliphs and Sultans.

The same sentiment controlled also the practice of the
Primitive Church. The}- buried their dead in rural
retreats. Gradually, and against constant protests of the
church, the exceptive practice of interment in Cathedral
crypts and church-yards entered and prevailed. This
privilege, first accorded to saints and martyrs — then
extended to patron-princes and their families — was con-
stantly widened until, to be excluded from the consecrated
court of the church, became a brand of peculiar reproba-
tion and ignominy. Hence, constantly protested and some-
times legislated against, arose the custom of the grave-
yard beside the church and in the midst oi the city. But
recently, considerations of health and natural fitness, and
beauty, have caused a return to the primitive custom. And
now, throughout Europe and the United States, the rural
cemetery is fast becoming the chief attraction, and one of
the most pleasing features in the vicinity of our great
cities.

This common sentiment of humanity in behalf of rural
sepulture, like all our natural tastes and feelings, has,
beyond its own gratification, ulterior uses and benefits.
Health unquestionably requires the rural cemetery. The
burial place in the midst of the city soon becomes a16

nuisance, exaling from its crowded graves the pestilence.
From this consideration, as well as that of taste, either by
custom or express legislation, burials in the city were
universally prohibited by the States of antiquity; and in
Medioeval and Modern times the contrary custom has pre-
vailed only by gradual encroachment, and against frequent
protest of civilian and churchman. And in these cases,
violation of natural sentiment has, not unfrequently,
avenged itself. Maladies the most dreadful to which man
is liable have come forth from the shallow and crowded
graves to avenge the unseemly bestowment of the dead.

And when we reflect that more than a million of human
beings will be borne to their burial from the midst of our
city, within the life of the child now born, we feel that a
regard to health, as well as taste, require us to begin to
make provision for such a coming host, and to appoint them
a place at least as distant from our city as where we now
stand.

But, far beyond the hygienic or aesthetic, the moral uses
of the rural cemetery claim our regard.

To make the place of the dead beautiful and attractive,
is wise for man. The amenity that lures life often within
the shadow of the tomb, purifies, ennobles, and hallows it.
The tomb, the great refiner and chastener of life, as a
beneficent remembrancer and educator — the perpetuator
of the discipline of sorrow, without its pang—the ad-
monisher of the true and enduring in our being—it is well
to give it permanent voice, often to invoke its influence to
sober life’s passion and hope, and to impart true wisdom
to its reason and aim.

To localize a grief and give it embodiment and expres-
sion, in enduring outward forms, that shall speak on and
speak ever, until the time wearies out the very marble,
this is to make sorrow a permanent purifier, long after the
agony of grief is past, and establish a blessed guardian
influence in human life.

Sweet and beautiful are the uses of sorrow. It softensthe hardness of our nature and quickens our sympathy
with our brother. To lead man to frequent converse with
the scenes of grief, blesses man and blesses society.

Hast thou had a sorrow? Erect a monument to it —
establish it by some enduring remembrancer, and visit oft
its sad memorial. For sorrow remembered turns to wis-
dom. Keep its memory green ; often wander where sight
and sound and the spirit and genius of the scene shall call
its pale but beautiful face. Call in the aids of taste* and
let the charm of natural and artistic beauty lead you often
to visit such scenes. For that face shall be to thee, the
face of a seraph, to win and woo thee to a higher and
purer being. In the shadow of the cypress and marble,
your spirit shall catch lessons that may change weeping
memories to immortal hope, and the death-sh&de to heaven’s
own light, and make the mute, pale sleepers of the grave
blessed angels beckoning to their own bright sphere.

We think it wise to make the Church and School attract-
ive. Render inviting, then, that spot that teaches a wisdom
beyond all the philosophy of the schools, and preaches with
an eloquence more solemn than ever rang under vault of
Minster or Cathedral—the Grave. Let the young, the
ardent, the gay and frivolous, the hot and eager throng of
life, often be allured to its audience. For the most part,
life rushes eager on in its phantom hunt, unrecking of its
true position and destiny. It is well to pause and listen at
times to the stern but merciful monitor that warns us we
are shadows in a world of shades.

Place, then, and preserve the city of Death beside that
of Life, as its sorrowful but blessed remembrancer. Let
Life look oft on the features of its pale brother. Make
that face not foul and revolting, but charming with the
spell of beauty and of holy repose ; that the living may
often come to gaze thereon, and may turn away witli
chastened hopes and passions, and quickened sympathies,
and higher and holier thoughts.Again, the rural cemetery, as a permanent conservatory
of the memories of the past, and the attractor of the liv-
ing within the sphere of their influence, is a great interest
of civilization; a perpetuator of social life and order. It
binds the present to the past by the ties of reverent love
and sorrow. It gives the virtue and reason of the departed
perpetual utterance on the ear of life. A cemetery is a
great picture gallery of the loved and honored dead. You
walk in it as in a Pantheon of historic virtues and fames.
The wise, the gifted, the eloquent, the good, the heroic,
and the loved, look forth upon you from their rest, and the
power of their thought is upon your soul. That thought,
in such scenes, preserves, not chains and enslaves order.
You feel that they are dead — their dust admonishes you
they were mortals like yourself; and no gods, nor limitary
cherubs to guard the boundaries of human or social pro-
gress.

In the on-rushing current of time, the memories most
loved and honored soon sink or drift into night. Anchor
them by enduring and ever-present monuments ; for with
them sinks a blessed power for social order and progress.
No age more than our own has needed such aids. Never
was it truer, that the heart of the children must be turned
to the fathers, or the earth shall be smitten with a curse.

The Present holds its life of the Past, and that through
the memory of the dead. These monuments are perpetual
proclaimers of their thoughts and institutions. The faces
that look down on Faneuil Hall and from the Rotunda of
our Capitol are watchers over principles that are our
national life.

The tomb of Vernon is the moral keystone of our arch
of union, and of empire.

History shows the strength of the power of political
conservation, in reverence for the dead, even in cases of
its abuse and perversion. The Chinese, whose worship of
the dead has conserved an effete civilization for twentycenturies—the Hindoo, whose traditions embalmed in time-
defying monuments from the source of the Ganges to Cape
Comorin, have for 3,000 years kept watch over a civiliza-
tion seemingly as lasting and changeless as the features of
the natural world — ancient Egypt, who embalmed herself
for ages in porphyry and granite and marble, making the
whole Nile valley one cemetery of mausoleum, of obelisk
and pyramid — illustrate the power of .the principle,
though in mis-direction and excess. Greece understood
its power—and in temple and grove, and forum and ceme-
tery, in forests of statuary and funeral sculpture, she
caused her gifted and glorious dead to speak, from gener-
ation to generation, to her brilliant but mobile people.
What a school was that of the cemetery of the Ceramicus,
where Plato and Aristotle taught in sight of the tombs of
the great departed ! What memories there aided their in-
structions to the youth of Athens, with an eloquence more
glowing, subduing and aw’ful than the wisdom of the Areo-
pagus or the Senate — than the heroic thought and Pythie
enthusiasm of Homer or Pindar—or than the pathos of her
tragic Muse, or the fiery logic of her great Orator. There,
in awful marble, still spoke her great Lawgiver — there
stood the hero of Marathon, whose trophies would not suf-
fer Themistocles to sleep ; and there Pericles, the true,
the noble, the eloquent, still plead for the life and glory of
the Athens he loved so well. And Rome, did she not ce-
ment the tremendous strength of her empire in tears of
honor for the dead, even more than in the blood of war?
This sentiment pervaded her entire life. It ran like a
religion through all her policy and laws and institutions.
From where the Lares stood on the family altar, to where
her rural tombs o’er-w'atched the public ways, and to
where her awful heroes looked down from her marble
Capitol, it greets you as a Tutelar Genius. So of modern
nations — the monuments of the dead keep watch for the
living. Does not the life of Britain this hour stand asmuch in the memories of Westminster, and other high
places of her dead, as in her fleets and armies, or in her
industrial greatness, or Parliamentary wisdom? Nor is
the beneficent power of this sentiment confined to names
eminent and world-famed. Prom sire to son in the
obscurest household, and through all the relations of
family and friendship, this contexture of sympathy and
authoritative memory extends, binding together the fabric
of society. Each hearth-side has its memories of virtues,
thoughts and affections, unknown to the great world, but
to it a vestal fire.

For these gentle, noiseless memories that pervade all
society, through and through, with life and beauty, like the
stilly sunlight, for these, as well as for fames whereof the
earth has rung—build we cemeteries—and would woo and
lure them to walk yet awhile, as with blessed and still
footsteps of angels, among the children of men. Not only
on the proud column or sarcophagus, where nations blazon
their grief, not only underneath the graven lyre and laurel
on the tomb of genius and heroism, but on the roughest
stone and simplest slab, we would have affection etch its
humble memorial, “ Teaching the rustic moralist to die.”

The rural cemetery, then, demanded by natural taste
and for its moral uses, we may regard as almost a necessity
of civilization ; and we feel it worthy of ourselves and our
city to provide such a place for the burial of our dead, and
to consecrate it for all coming time as a sanctuary for
grief, and memory, and funeral silence and repose.

We count it a matter of gratulation that the work has
been entered on in such a spirit and with such beginnings.
The enterprise has been long contemplated, and at length
entered upon as almost a necessity of seemly and perma-
nent sepulture.

All of us have been pained, and some of us deeply
afflicted, at the condition of some of our burial places.
With graves crowded, and sometimes packed with doubleor treble occupancy, as though we grudged the dead room
for their rest; with little embellishment, even of the
simplest and rudest kind attempted, and little practicable,
for want of space ; lying in the midst of the dust and din
of the city, if not within its corporate limits, they have
seemed most unseemly, not to say repulsive, places for
interring or revisiting our dead. Our tastes and moral
sentiments and affections are outraged in committing our
loved forms to such localities, and the whole tone of our
civilization suffers also. Some of our oldest burial places
are already becoming a public street. Others constantly
pressed on more and more by the enlarging city, already
over-crowded, are liable soon to pass into neglect and
nuisances, both moral and physical. Others, not yet mo-
lested, must at no distant day be overtaken by the growth
of our city, and none large enough for a general place of
interment. It has, consequently, seemed timely and need-
ful to establish and consecrate for all coming time a City
Cemetery, far enough out of the city and large enough to
answer its demands for an indefinite future. After much
deliberation, the present site has been fixed upon as the
one most suitable that could be obtained for this purpose.
We congratulate the community on the choice—the selec-
tion of a place so well adapted in'its natural features to the
demands of taste and feeling, and the proprieties of the
grave—a landscape of a beauty and a wide And pictur-
esque variety rare amid our scenery, and commanding ulti-
mately a view of our noble river and its vast commerce,
and destined itself in coming time to be a prominent object
of regard to strangers passing to and from our city, as the
monument of a people who honor themselves in honoring
their dead.

The variety of surface, and the thriving growth of
trees, and the extent of the grounds, will give opportunity
for individual taste, and family seclusion in selection,
grouping and arrangement, and for embellishing it withwalks and avenues, and vistas and copses, amid which the
slab and column and pyramid may lift their marble memo-
rials — embowered amid thickets of rose and jessamine —
or underneath the oak, pine or cypress. Meanwhile, the
landscape by its varieties may image forth to the smitten
mourner, a similitude of his mortal pilgrimage, in its com-
plex and sinuous paths—its steep ascent, its gentle or rapid
decline — its height, baptized in glorious but passing sun-
shine, or swept by the Winter storm or elemental rage —
its lawns and sheltered vales, or the mild and melancholy
shade of the dell through which the path winds to climb
again, embleming that valley into which mortal life at last
descends, to mount a higher day. The ever-flowing river
may remind him of the ceaseless tide that hurries ever to
the great ocean. The gorgeous and shifting clouds of the
sky above, and the chequer of light and shadow they cast
on the earth beneath, may image life’s quick contrast and
the phantom shapes that mark the chase of the children of
mortality.

The various attractions which this landscape presents,
and which may be enhanced and multiplied by an art which
shall bring out and set off, not annihilate or disguise,
nature, cannot fail to render it a favorite resort, not only
to the mourner, but to th6 lovers of picturesqueness and
beauty, natural or artistic. The facility for construction
of walks and carriage-ways, by reason of the extent and
undulation of the surface and the diversity of slope, fur-
nishing scope for many a maze, and frequent surprises of
sudden turns and novel views, of bowers, arbors, vistas,
green and cool and breezy, half-revealing, half-concealing
some new devices which art, wedded to nature, hallows
to the memory of the dead — this, and numerous other
natural advantages, together with the pleasantness of the
approach to it from the city, through scenes of bluff and
grove and river, and in a northward direction, combine to
assure us the Bellefontaine Cemetery will furnish whathas been long felt as a desideratum for our city, namely,
an attractive rural resort in the neighborhood of our city,
consecrated to taste and order, and hallowed to moral and
physical repose and beauty. How pleasant to have such
a rural haunt— excluding the profane and vulgar or vicious
annoyances and offences which often constrain the pure
and cultivated to forego excursions needful for health.
How pleasant to have such a haunt within half an hour’s
drive of our hot and weary city. How inviting to walk
or recline an hour here, in gentle thought, or discourse
amid the green and shade, and the breezy coolness of
nature, to hear her voice and look upon her face, and feel
her fresh breath.

The selection so judiciously made, has been followed up
in a corresponding spirit, and the enterprise, we trust,
will be prosecuted with such taste and liberality that, here-
after, the stranger will no more pass St. Louis, leaving
Bellefontaine Cemetery unvisited, than he would Boston
without seeing Auburn, or Paris without a drive to Pere
la Chaise.

Nature, history, health, taste — the demands of affection
and of cultivation — sanction our enterprise. Prepare
we, then, here a Forum of the dead — a Church of the
Past, where memory and honor and love and sorrow may
speak from generation to generation. Along these hills,
beneath these whispering shades, adown these silent dales,
what voices from graves unnumbered shall whisper through
the coming time, breathing the spirit of the departed over
the living, and blending in sad, solemn, but beautiful har-
mony, the Past with the future life of society, aye, and
Time with Eternity. The Forum of the Dead — silent
and vacant now, but fast the orators of the future hasten
hither and hourly by the hearth-side and in the sequestered
vale of life, as well as in the high places of commerce
and politics, and philosophy and genius, they are now pre-
paring the magic of their eloquence in the love and honorof human hearts — an eloquence that, from age to age,
through these retreats, shall pour its hallowing pathos and
persuasion on the ear of the future, as long as the heart of
yonder city beats with life’s fever, or yonder mighty river
sweeps to its ocean home.

The pale orators, the tearful auditory, will soon be here.
Along the paths of the future I see them hastening hither
— and ourselves amid the silent speakers, and the weep-
ing, awe-struck listeners.

The time gone — the beautiful masonry — melancholy
realm. Here oft shall we come to hear the sweet sadness
of its voice; to sit again in its light shadow, and dream
over its dreams once more; to summon up its fading
scenery, and call back its fugitive phantoms from the
realms of perpetual night. Here oft shall we come, where
genius, and goodness, and beauty, and affection, shall be
wedded in death, to relimn in memory the dimming image
of the beautiful; to list again the sweet music of love, and
walk again in awful companionship wjtli saint, and sage,
and hero, whose home is now above the stars ; to catch
again the magic tones of eloquence now dying on the ear
of time ; to see the colors and shapes of art start into life
under hands that had forever forgotten their cunning, and
listen to the lyre that shall be swept by the breezes of this
world no more.

Aye, we trust memories as awful and as eloquent as
any that consecrate Auburn, Greenwood or Westminster,
may here utter themselves in enduring and grateful mar-
ble ; that the champions and victims in the battles of the
coming age — the battles of truth, and liberty, and love —
glorious as any that have hallowed the high places of his-
tory where they stood, and the spot of earth where they
repose, shall here speak to coming time, in forms of art
and nature, ever beautiful and young.

Aye, and here, too, shall we come to hear again the
hearth-side voices that moan at times over the spirit fromthe past, like an ASolian harp in the breeze of a summer
eve, to converse again with look, and thought, and tone, of
hearts forever cold, and lips now sealed in perpetual
silence, and eyes that shall open on the world of life no
more.

Here, the counsels of a revered father, too oft, alas, and
too long, unheeded in life’s hot and giddy game, shall speak
from the sod that covers his hoary locks; and to our tear-
ful eye shall come again that sweetest of remembered
things, a mother’s smile, now sweeter and holier from the
consecration of death. The sister that faded in her early
flower; the brother that sank in his generous promise ; the
little son or daughter whose face shines like a far-off star
in memory; and the companions of our pilgrimage, the
meek, the noble and loving, the pure and the saintly, that
have fallen from our bosoms to the tomb; hither shall we
come to commune again with these—to see their beckoning
hands and hear their gentle voices from the other side of
the dark river, and look upon the beauty of those who
have beheld the face of God.

Make, we then, beautiful here, the place of our dead —
make it sacred to quiet thought and meditative repose
—make it where the sun may shine on it, cheerful, but
still and solemn, like the light of another life, where the
warble of the bird and the voices of nature may gently
wake the morn, or lull the dreamy noontide, or soothe the
sober hour of even. Away from the din and turmoil of
life, and from the clamor and bustle of commerce — where
the changes of the year come each in stillness and gentle-
ness— where the voices of spring come like a Sabbath
orchestra, and Summer’s music is like the matin or vesper
hymn of prayer, and nature dies in autumn as man would
like to pass, in content maturity and gentle, quiet beauty,
and winter in seemly repose and solitude, waits the new-
born and glorious life ; here we feel it is fitting to lay
our dead on the bosom of sympathising nature. Let theviolet and harebell kiss the turf above them ; let the rose
and ivy embower, and the oak and evergreen wave above
their silent rest; let the zephyrs, freely visiting, sigh
through the whispering leaves with the voice of the past;
let the night wind through the solemn wood wail its requiem
for the departed ; let the moonlight stream over them,
through the shadowy branches, like the light of other days,
and let the stars of even, in tranquil and holy watch, look
down upon their graves, like celestial Love watching their
resurrection.

Fellow Citizens : It may not be inappropriate to remem-
ber here, in this scene and at this hour, that of that voice
of the Dead which is to go forth of these shades, down
coming time, we shall not only be listeners, but utterers,
ourselves part of it. Often may we come hither again,
slowly and solemnly ,and in tears, following those who shall
no more behold the sun: but I see in the future another
coming which knows no return; when other mourners
shall pass sadly by, and other eyes shall weep because we
go to our long home. Soon the mourner shall follow the
mourned, till we, and all hearts that beat for us beneath
these heavens, shall at last keep the long and silent rendez-
vous of the grave. Yea, I see the endless succession of the
Future hastening on, as the many waters of yonder mighty
river, till marble after marble crumbles; till the seasons
weary in their round, and the sun grows weary in the sky,
and time itself is sere and death-like old. I see the world
of Life itself passing, and Death’s shadow falls over all.
But Death himself shall perish in that hour. The great
Victor of Death shall summon the pale prisoners of the
grave, and they shall come forth, and then, though the
voice of earth’s memory may have perished for ages, the
rock-hewn monument may have crumbled long cycles ago,
still a record, written on no earthly marble, waits us in the
great Doom, and our mortal works follow us there.
May this spot, as often as we may visit it, remind us ofthat world, lest while we beautify the face of the grave we
leave its bosom dark, and chill, and desolate.

Well is it for us to remember that all our care and
adornment of the tomb cannot avoid the doom, or change
the reality of death. Garnish and disguise it as we may,
still it is the grave — the dark and narrow house. Our
care for the sepulchre is simply reflexive in its benefits—
it reacts on the living—it cannot wake again, or comfort
in the house of darkness the sleepers of the tomb. To
it all the wrays of life lead. No cunning of art, no wisdom
of philosophy, can shun it.

“ The pomp of pageantry, the pride of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Await alike the inevitable hour —

The path of glory leads but to the grave.”

We cannot wrestle with death, or wrest from oblivion his
prey. Stern immitigable Death ! Him no tears can soften,
no sorcery of art, no charm of beauty can beguile of his
rage, or cheat of his victim. Alas ! him we cannot soothe
or propitiate, or disarm. Dark, cruel King! To him go
down the revered and the lovely—the good, the wise, the
gifted, the heroic, the beautiful, down to his gloomy realm.
There is the awre of age, proud manhood’s strength, sweet
childhood, and the glorious bloom of youth. For ages
these have been his prey. Unsated, unpropitiated, un-
bribed, he waits still the loved ones from our arms and
bosoms — inexorable death. And vain is our struggle
against his strength, the indomitable, the mighty, strongest
of all beneath the Throne of the Highest; vain against him,
are the strength of empire or the pride of art—the charm
of innocence, or the smile of love—the magic of eloquence
or wit, or song—the life of the granite or the marble. To
dark Oblivion’s bourne hasten alike the glory of intellect,
the acclaim of fame, the pride of ambition, the pageants
of power, and the bannered battalia of war. All-conquer-
ing Death! One, and only one, hath vanquished him —
vanquished in his own blood. In that blood alone we alsomay conquer. He it is that “liveth and was dead, yea and
is alive forevermore, and hath the keys of hell and of
death.” Be those tombs with their sculptured instructions
memorials to us of this great truth. Let pyramid, column
and statue with heavenward hand, and slab with graven
cherubim, who speak of immortality, and point to God—let
them be to us ever the index fingers, which time, in the
shadow of vanity, still extends toward the world of ever-
lasting light, pointing ever to Him, who sitteth above the
stars, wearing the vesture dipped in blood, the conqueror
of death, the achiever of immortality for man.

The following hymn, composed by Mrs. F. M.
Brotherton, was sweetly sung by the Choir.

HYMN.

Our Father ! with a holy trust,

And faith, we come before thee now :

Look down upon this hallowed dust,

As low before thy Throne we bow.

* * * * *

Wilt thou not grant that we may deem
The grave an entrance to the sky;

A prelude to a long bright dream,

And glories hid from mortal eye—

A passage to that radiant shore,

Where golden harps give back such note»,

As seraphs only number o'er,

And bliss in sweetest measure floats !

And as we lay eaeh cherished one
To rest, amid its shade and bloom,

Father! be life for them begun—

A deathless life, beyond the tomb.The following ode, composed by Wm. G. Black-
wood, Esq., of this city was sung by the Choir.

ODE.

’Tis hallowed ground whereof the sod
Is planted by the hand of God,	•

With flowers that blossom o’er the tomb,

To wear for aye immortal bloom.

God’s garden* spreads its beauties here,

Ilis Spirit haunts the sacred place—

The gateway to a heav’nlier sphere,

When man hath run his weary race.

Who loves not vales so sweetly lone,

That an eternal Sabbath own ?

Here Nature seems to kneel in prayer,

A Gospel grace shed everywhere.

The wind, more solemn, murmurs low,

The birds a silv’ry anthem sing,

And leaves a rustling music know,

Like to a passing angel’s wing.

Not mortal dust, to dust returned,

Hath for these spots all rev’rence earned,

But watered is each turfy bier
By grief’s and pure affection’s tear.

And with loved forms within the tomb,

The loves, and hopes of years are fled,

To bud anew in flowers that bloom
In tender mem’ry o’er the dead.

Let monumental structures rise
To saints, art’s splendor glorifies:

Her genius roams no lovelier fields
Than the all “ Silent City” yields!

And they in life who walk its shades,

Will learn to love each still retreat,

As the sweet thought the heart invades—

Here man and his Creator meet.

• Among the Germans, by a touchingly beautiful metaphor, tho c-rare-yard is called “ Cod's Garden."The following extract in reference to the Dedication
is from the Republican of May 16th.

In the ceremonies of yesterday, there was one most
agreeable feature — one that did not fail to impress
itself upon every observant person present. It teas
the presence and unanimity of pastors and members of
various churches and denominations, and persons, not
members of any church ; and several reverend gentle-
men, Delegates to the Methodist Conference, were
present.Remarks.

By the dedication of Bellefontaine Cemetery, the
want of a public burial place, characterized by perma-
nency, seclusion, and natural beauty, has been supplied :
and the citizens of St. Louis may now seek, and find,
amid its grateful shade and quiet loveliness, a spot shut
out from the busy haunts of bustling life, to be the
home of their dead forever.

The beauty and fitness of these grounds for the
purposes intended have been eloquently portrayed in
another part of this publication, and it is unnecessary
here to enlarge upon these topics.

By the Charter of the Association, these grounds
are secured for Cemetery purposes forever, and placed
entirely beyond the power of Legislative or other con-
trol, save in accordance with the objects intended in
their selection and dedication. No lot is liable to tax-
ation for any purpose ; nor can a lot be sold under
execution, or by order of any court, or in any way
conveyed, after interments have been made in it, out
of the family of the original proprietor.

The Bellefontaine Cemetery is laid out upon a more
enlarged and liberal plan than any heretofore adopted
for a similar purpose in this country — about one-half
of the ground being appropriated to roads, paths and
borders. The principal- “ Tour” is about four miles
in length, and twenty feet wide, with a border of eight
feet in width upon each side. Each lot will front on
a road or pathway, sufficiently wide for the passage of
carriages; and every lot and road will be laid out withborders. These borders, when ornamented with flowers
and shrubbery, will add to the beauty of the place.

The contemplated improvements will correspond
with the liberal plan upon which the Cemetery is laid
out.

The completion of the Receiving Tomb, and the
commencement of the Chapel have been delayed by
circumstances beyond the control of the Trustees.

The Board hope soon to make such arrangements,
that they w ill no longer be dependent upon contractors
for any work they may wish to have done.

The sale of lots, so far, has equalled the expecta-
tions of the most sanguine, and will justify the
Trustees in pushing forward the improvements.

The Rural Cemetery Association was organized for
a public purpose — to supply a public want. Its aim,
and the intentions of its projectors, have been often
made known in this community, and its original and
publicly-avowed object will, in all respects, be faithfully
carried into execution.

Persons wishing to purchase lots or single graves in
the Cemetery, can receive any information desired, by
calling at the office of the Association, corner of Third
and Chesnut streets.Rules unii Regulations.

1st. All lots shall be held in pursuance of “An Act
to incorporate the Rural Cemetery Association of St.
Louis,” approved March 7th, 1849, and such By-laws
as are made by the Board of Trustees.

2d. The size of lots shall be not less than four hun-
dred square feet.

3d. The price of lots shall be twenty cents per
square foot. When sixteen hundred feet, or upwards,
are taken by one person, a discount of ten per cent,
will be allowed.

4th. The proprietor of each lot shall have a right
to inclose the same with a wall or fence not exceeding
eighteen inches high, exclusive of the railing, which
shall be placed within the line of said lot.

5th. Proprietors shall not allow interments to be
made in their lots for a remuneration.

6th. No disinterment shall be allowed without per-
mission being obtained at the office of the Association.

7th. The proprietor of each lot shall have a right
to erect any proper stones, monuments, or sepulchral
structures thereon, all of which shall be properly set
in masonry; and to cultivate trees, shrubs, and plants
on the same—but no tree growing within the lot or
border shall be cut down or destroyed without the
consent of the Trustees.

8th. If any tj ees or shrubs, situate in any lot, shall,
by means of their roots, branches, or otherwise, be-
come detrimental to the adjacent lots or avenues, or
dangerous or inconvenient to passengers, it shall be
the duty of the said Trustees, and they shall have the
5right, to enter the said lot and remove the said trees
and shrubs, or such parts thereof as are detrimental,
dangerous, or inconvenient.

9th. If any monument, effigy, or inclosure, or any
structure whatever, or any inscription, be placed in or
upon any lot, which shall be determined by the major
part of the Trustees for the time being, to be offen-
sive or improper, or injurious to the appearance of the
surrounding lots or grounds, the said Trustees shall
have the right, and it shall be their duty, to enter upon
such lot and remove the said offensive or improper
object or objects.

10th. It shall be the duty of the Board of Trustees,
from time to time, to lay out or alter such avenues or
walks, and to make such rules and regulations for the
government of the grounds, as they may deem re-
quisite and proper to secure and promote the general
objects of the Institution.

11th. The proprietors of lots and their families shall
be allowed access to the grounds at all times, observ-
ing the rules which may be adopted for the regulation
of visitors.

tlulco concerning Improoemento.

1st. To insure the proper regulation of the grounds,
the grade of all lots will be determined by the Agents
of the Institution.

2d. All workmen employed in the construction of
vaults, inclosing of lots, erection of monuments, &c.,
must be subject to the control and direction of theAgents of the Institution; and any workman failing to
conform to this regulation will not be permitted after-
wards to work on the grounds.

3d. Wooden inclosures are not allowed.

4th. Tombs, where the entrance is not closed with
earth, must be furnished with shelves, having divisions
allowing interments to be separately made, and per-
petually sealed so as to prevent the escape of un-
pleasant effluvia.

ttules contenting Jntennents.

1st. A receiving tomb is provided at the Cemetery
for the accommodation of those who intend to pur-
chase lots. Twenty days from the time of interment
are allowed for making the selection and removing the
remains. When the improvement of the lot, or other
circumstances, may make it necessary, a reasonable
extension of the time will be granted. Interments
made in the Winter season may remain until the
weather in the Spring will admit of selections being
made. No charge is made for the use of the tomb,
except one dollar each time that it is opened. In
cases of removal from the Cemetery, however, a
charge will be made of ten dollars each for adults, and
live dollars for children.

2d. Single graves may be procured of two classes:
first, in lots at six dollars each for adults, and three
dollars for children under ten years; second, in lots at
four dollars each for adults, and two dollars for child-
ren under ten years old.36

3d. The duties of Superintendent of interments are
performed by the keeper of the grounds, who with his
family resides at the Cemetery, and is required to be
in attendance at every interment.

4th. In each case of burial, a statement, giving the
name, place of nativity, residence, age, disease of the
person to be interred, and also whether married or un-
married, must be handed to the keeper, that an accu-
rate registry may be made of the same.

5th. All interments will be subject to the following
charges, which in all cases must be paid at the office
of the Cemetery before the interment, or to the keeper
at the time of interment; the price of opening graves
will be as follows : —

Adult’s graves, usual depth, six feet,	$3 00
“ “ seven feet,	3 25
“ “ eight feet,	3 50
“ “ nine feet,	4 00
Children’s graves, ton years and under, six feet,	2 00
“ , - “ “ “ eight feet,	2 50
“ “ “ “ nine feet,	3 00
Opening vaults under ground,	2 00
“ tombs in side hills, and above ground,	1 00

Rules concerning tlisilors.

Each proprietor of a lot will be entitled to a ticket
of admission into the Cemetery, with a vehicle, under
the following regulations : —

1st. No \ ehicle will be admitted unless accompanied
by a proprietor, or a member of his household, with
his ticket, or unless presenting a special ticket of ad-
mission obtained at the office of the Company.2d. On Sundays the gates will be closed, proprietors
of lots, however, and persons accompanying them, will
be admitted on foot by applying to the keeper at the
lodge.

3d. No vehicle will be allowed to pass through the
grounds at a rate exceeding four miles the hour; and
persons in vehicles, or on horse-back, are expressly
prohibited from leaving the paths.

4th. No person having refreshments of any kind
will be permitted to come within the grounds; nor
will any smoking be allowed.

5 th. All persons are prohibited from picking any
flowers, either wild or cultivated, or breaking any tree,
shrub or plant.

6th. All persons are prohibited from writing upon,
defacing, or injuring any monument, fence, or other
structure, in or belonging to the Cemetery.

7th. Any person disturbing the quiet and good
order of the place by noise or other improper conduct,
or who shall violate any of the foregoing rules, will be
compelled instantly to leave the grounds.

8th. The Porter is charged to prohibit the entrance
of all improper persons, and also those who, at any
time, shall have wilfully transgressed the regulations
of the Cemetery, although presenting tickets.

9th. No money may be paid to the Porter, or other
person in the employ of the Association, in reward for
any personal service or attention.Suggestions to Cot ©toners, &c.

The following Suggestions to Lot Owners, taken
from a late publication of Greenwood Cemetery, New
York, may be of service to persons contemplating im-
provements in Bellefontaine Cemetery, and are adopted
and inserted as the recommendations of the Board of
Trustees.

DURABILITY OF IMPROVEMENTS.

The permanence of sepulchral architecture is an
object so desirable, as to entitle it to special attention.
The dilapidation and disfigurement of structures reared
for the dead, have been too common to excite surprise,
but can never be witnessed without pain. Knowing,
as we do, the numerous causes of decay and displace-
ment, which are ever in action, it should be made a
primary consideration to guard against them. Respect
for the dead — respect for ourselves—and a just
regard for the taste and feelings of all whom either
affection or curiosity may attract to the Cemetery,
demand so much, at least, of those who shall make
improvements in the Bellefontaine Cemetery. T his
is a matter, obviously, in which all are interested —
for, whatever the precaution and care used by some,
if others through inattention suffer their grounds and
monuments to become squalid and ruinous, painful
contrasts will soon offend the eye, and the entire
grounds will suffer a serious injury.

It is not indeed possible wholly to prevent the
ravages of atmospheric influences, but proper care inthe erection of the structure will greatly counteract
and long retard them; while those who shall see fit to
take advantage of the provisions made by the Charter
for the preservation of monuments and inclosures, may
insure their integrity and beauty for ages to come.
With the view to promote this result, the ensuing sug-
gestions are offered.

INCLOSURES OF LOTS.

Various modes may be adopted, according to vary-
ing circumstances. Those most in use are, hedges,
posts and chains, posts and bars, and iron railings.
These will be noticed in order.

HEDGE INCLOSURES.

These may be formed of various kinds of plants,
but those best adapted to cemetery purposes are the
box and the arbor vitae, which are evergreen; the
privet or prim, and the osage orange. The hawthorn
is sometimes used, but being the native of a humid
climate, its leaves often fall in August or September,
making it less desirable than some other plants.

For small plots the box is perhaps the best, as it is
of slow growth, and does not for a long time attain
such] height as to exclude the circulation of air, so
necessary to the growth and luxuriance of the grass
and shrubbery within the lot. For large plots the
arbor vitae is most suitable, as it presents at all seasons,
if properly set out and trimmed, a screen of truly
beautiful verdure. Hedges are not suitable for lots
which have much descent, as the loose earth about the
stems and roots is liable to be washed away by heavy
rains.POSTS AND	CHAINS.

This mode	of inclosure	is objectionable.	The

chains are extremely liable to rust, and as they do not
bind the posts firmly together, and are frequently used
as seats and swings by children, they soon get out of
place, and of course present an unsightly appearance.

POSTS AND BARS.

Inclosures of this kind are substantial, and if not
so generally	introduced as	to produce monotony,

appear well. Various kinds of stone are used for posts,
comprising granite, marble,	and sand-stone.	Care

should be taken that, whether for chains or bars, no
posts should be used but such as are free from a strati-
fied formation. Quincy granite, and also some kinds
of sand-stone, are exempt from this objection. If
marble be used, the chains or bars, which come more
immediately in contact with the posts, should be so
thoroughly painted as to prevent discoloration to the
marble from the rusting of the iron.

IRON RAILINGS.

In regard to these it may be remarked, that those
which unite simplicity and good proportion are deemed
to be in best taste, and most likely to afford permanent
satisfaction. While firmness and stability should char-
acterize each railing, unnecessary size and weight of
iron should be avoided, especially in plots of ordinary
size. Large plots require a somewhat heavier inclo-
sure in order to appear well, particularly those in
which massive monuments and tombs are erected.

In selecting patterns, those which expose the fewestjoints and crevices to the action of the weather should
be preferred. Careful attention should be paid to the
foundations on which they are erected. If coping be
used, it should be placed on a stone wall, laid in ce-
ment, at least two and a half feet deep, so as to be
secure from the action of the frost; or if stone blocks
or posts are used, (which are preferable,) they should
be of granite, at least eight inches square at both ends,
and placed securely in the ground, not less than two
and a half feet.

Railings should be painted as soon as erected, before
the rust commences forming, else the paint will be apt
to come off in scales. The paint should consist of
three coats, made quite thin, as a better body will
thereby be formed than if made of the usual consist-
ency. The first coat should be of red lead and litharge;
the second and third, of pure white lead and oil,
colored as may be desired. If the second coat be of
lead color, it will best prepare the' railing for any other
color which may be used. In painting, care should be
taken to cover every part, and to fill every crevice.
Thus painted, railings will require no care for several
years. It may be well to observe, that common black
paint or varnish, being composed very frequently of
lamp-black and oil merely, will not long prevent the
action of rust, and ought not, therefore, to be relied
upon. If black be preferred, as a color, two previous
coats of red and lead colors should be applied.

MONUMENTS.

In regard to monuments, scarcely too much care can
be bestowed to insure permanency. The foundations
should be laid strongly in cement, and be not less than
6six feet deep—the usual depth of graves. The stone
of which the structure is made should be free from
visible defects, and, if possible, of sufficient size to
extend across the entire structure. Monuments com-
posed of common masonry and faced with thin slabs
of marble or stone, will not last. It is a species of
veneering that will soon exhibit the effects of the se-
vere exposure to which it is subjected — nor will even
the solid stone long endure, unless it be made to lie 011
what is termed its natural bed. Most kinds of stone
and marble are composed of strata, or layers, not un-
like the leaves of a book. If the stones are placed
edgewise, or vertically, so as to expose the strata
unfavorably to the action of the weather and the frost,
the seams will in time separate, and the whole structure
eventually fall into ruin and decay.

TOMBS.

The preceding remarks will apply with even greater
force to tombs built in part or wholly above ground.
In such structures particular care is needed in the plan
and construction which may be adopted. The stones’
of which they are built should be of sufficient length
to extend frequently through the wall, not mere slabs
set up on the edge, forming no bond of union between
the outer and inner surface. Where angles occur, each
alternate course should be composed of solid stones
cut to the angle required, so as to prevent effectually
a separation of the walls.

When placed in the hill side, the parts above the
natural surface of the ground should be of cut stone,
the sides as well as the front, so as to avoid all artifi-
cial embankments and sodding. The natural form of43

the hill will thus be preserved, unsightly artificial
mounds will be prevented, and the expense of fre-
quently renewing and repairing embankments will be
avoided. The front foundation wall should not be less
in depth than two and a half feet, nor should the side
walls in any part be of less thickness than two feet.
The roof should always be of stone tiles, or cut stone
flagging, and the joints thoroughly protected from
exposure to the weather. The interior of the tombs
should be fitted up with shelves, so constructed as to
admit of each coffin being permanently and tightly
sealed, at the time of interment, with tablets of stone
or marble ready prepared for the inscription desired.

Thus furnished, no unpleasant effluvia will be per-
ceived, nor will any re-interment of the remains he
necessary, as in other cases, after the coffins shall have
decayed.

VAULTS.

Vaults under ground should he built of stone walls,
at least eighteen inches thick, with arch of hard brick
twelve inches thick, and all laid in the best of cement.

VARIETY OF MONUMENTS.

As the permanency of monuments, and their inclo-
sures, is essential to the proper appearance of the
grounds, so are symmetry and variety of form neces-
sary to produce a permanently pleasing effect.

The following passage, which occurs in a publica-
tion of the Laurel Hill Cemetery Corporation, at Phila-
delphia, is appropriate to the subject: —

“ It has been the frequent remark of visitors — our
own citizens, as well as strangers — that a monotony
already begins to he apparent in the style and form of44

the improvements; obelisk succeeds obelisk, etc., with
only slight variations, and if this is continued, we shall
see, in time, too dull a uniformity to strike the mind
with agreeable sentiments. This may be obviated by
a little more inquiry before ordering a monument, and
by not always taking the advice of the stone-mason,
often himself willing to suggest the greatest bulk for
the least money, and thus allowing marble to usurp the
place of good taste.”	*	*	*	*	*

“A correct idea, expressed in marble, may be very
beautiful, so long as it is unique; but by too frequent
imitation, and in too close proximity with its original,
it may destroy the charm of the first, and ultimately
raise feelings in the beholder the reverse of those
desired.”

SHRUBBERY.

In the selection and placing of trees and large
shrubs, good judgment and taste should prevail. A
very beautiful effect may be produced by appropriately
grouping trees, so arranging size, form and color, that
all will harmonize, or contrast favorably with the sur-
rounding shrubbery. If attention be not paid to this
feature, the most beautiful landscape will be marred;
and common observation shows that such results in the
transplanting of trees are often witnessed.

Discrimination should also be exercised in selecting
smaller shrubbery and flowers, that they may be suit-
able to the purpose for which the grounds are set
apart. To arrange a burial plot as one would plant a
flower-garden is, to say the least, in very questionable
taste. Care ought then to be taken that too many
flowers are not set out, and that the kinds and colorsof such as are selected be appropriate. Nothing coarse
or incongruous with the object and the place, should
be chosen. Those which are delicate in size, form,
and color, should be preferred. Such as are simple
and unobtrusive, and particular^ those which are sym-
bolical of friendship, affection and remembrance, seem
most fitting to beautify the “ Place of Graves.”

AID TO PROPRIETORS.

Proprietors contemplating making improvements,
will have every facility extended to them by applying
at the office of the Cemetery. Plans and estimates of
railings, monuments and tombs, will be procured, and
the superintendence of the whole will be undertaken
if desired.

Bequests for tlje Jmproucmem of (Cemetern (Pronnbs.

By the seventh section of the /Vet of Incorporation
it is provided, that Bequests may be made to the Cor-
poration, in trust, for the improvement of the Ceme-
tery Grounds, or any part thereof, or for the preserv-
ation of any improvement made in the Cemetery.
This provision will enable persons to perpetuate their
improvements, or to give additional interest and beauty
to the Cemetery Grounds, should such be their wishes.£ist of prices rniii t£l)nrgcs.

LOTS.	
For Lots.—No Lot to contain less than 400 superficial feet.	
Per square foot,		$0 20
Where 1,600 superficial feet, or more, arc taken by one per- son, a discount of ten per cent, will be allowed.	
SINGLE GRAVES.	
For single grave for adult, in first class lot, ....	6 00
“ “ “ in second class lot,	4 00
“ “ child, under ten years, in first class lot,	3 00
“ “ “ “ “ in second class lot,	2 00
OPENING GRAVES.	
For opening grave for adult, usual depth, six feet,	3 00
“ “ “ seven feet,	3 25
“ “ “ eight feet,	3 50
“ “ “ nine feet,	4 00
“ “ child, under ten years, six feet, .	2 00
“ “ “ “ “ eight feet,	2 50
“ “ “ “ “ nine feet, .	3 00
“ vaults under ground, .....	2 00
“ tombs, in side hills and above ground,	1 00
For sodding grave of adult,	  n “ child, ......	1 00 75
Tlriek, cement, flagging, and extra labor, when required, will be furnished at reasonable prices.	
RECEIVING TOMB.	
For deposit of body of adult, to be afterwards removed from the Cemetery,		10 00
For deposit of body of child, under ten years, to bo after- wards removed from the Cemetery, .....	5 oo
For opening tomb to receive body to be afterwards interred in the Cemetery, ........	1 00
For opening tomb to remove such lxxly from the Receiving Tomb, . . . • ■ •	1 00A N A C T

TO INCORPORATE THE

OF

8AIMT LOUIS.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State
of Missouri, as follows: —

SECTION I.

That John F. Darby, Henry Kayser, Wayman
Crow, James E. Yeatman, James Harrison, Charles S.
Rannells, Gerard B. Allen, Philander Salisbury, Win.
Bennet, Augustus Brewster, and Wm. M. M’Pherson,
and their associates and successors, be, and they are
hereby created, a body politic and corporate, by the
name and style ot the Rural Cemetery Association,
and by that name shall have perpetual succession, and
shall be competent by the name and style aforesaid, to
contract and be contracted with, to sue and be sued,
plead and be impleaded, defend and be defended, in
all Courts and places, and in all matters whatsoever;
and shall in like manner have authority to have and
use a common seal, and may alter or change the same
at pleasure, and may also make, ordain, and establish
such by-laws, rules and regulations, as may be deemed
necessary for the good government of said Corporation,and the efficient management of its affairs : Provided,
that the same shall not be contrary to any provisions
of this Charter, nor to the constitution and laws of
this State, or of the United States.

SECTION II.

The said Corporation shall have power to purchase
and hold a tract of land not exceeding two hundred
acres, to be located not less than two miles nor more
than five miles distant from the present corporate
limits of the city of St. Louis, to be appropriated and
used for a cemetery, or burying ground, and for that
purpose may lay off* the same into lots and sub-di-
visions suitable for graves, vaults, and monuments,
and may embellish the same with trees, shrubbery, and
flowers, and lay out roads and walks; and when thus
laid off and dedicated, shall be forever held by said
Corporation for the purposes aforesaid, and none other.
Said Corporation may sell and convey any of the lots
or sub-divisions in said Cemetery, for the purpose
aforesaid, subject to such conditions as may be pre-
scribed by its by-laws; and every right sold and con-
veyed shall be held and used by the proprietors there-
of, for the purposes aforesaid; shall be indivisible, and
shall not be subject to attachment or sale under exe-
cution, or to be conveyed by the owner, out of his
family, after any interments have been made in such
lot, nor by order of any court.*

•An interlineation in the original was transposed by the Engrossing Clerk.
It should read : — “And shall not be subject to attachment or sale under exe-
cution, nor by order of any Court, or to be conveyed by the owner out of his
family, after any interments have been made in such lot.”49

SECTION I 11

The officers of said Corporation shall consist of not
less than seven, nor more than eleven Trustees, (the
number to be regulated by the by-laws,) a Secretary
and Treasurer, and such other officers and agents as
they may choose to elect. The Trustees shall be
elected annually, and shall hold their offices for one
year, and until their successors are duly elected.
They shall choose one of their number as President,
who shall also be President of the Corporation; they
shall also choose a Secretary and Treasurer, either
from their own body or at large, whose duties shall
be defined by the by-laws of the Corporation; a ma-
jority of the Trustees shall constitute a quorum for
business, and they shall fill all vacancies that may
occur in their body, during the time for which they
are elected.

SECTION IV.

The persons herein named shall constitute the first
Board of Trustees, and shall hold their offices until an
election of their successors takes place, as hereinafter
provided, and any three of said persons may call a
meeting of said Board, by giving at least five days
notice in writing, or through a daily paper published
in St. Louis, and if a quorum appear at the time and
place appointed, they shall organize by the election of
officers, and proceed to business; said Board shall de-
termine upon the amount of capital stock of said Cor-
poration ; (which shall not exceed fifty thousand dol-
lars;) the mode and manner in which the same shall
be subscribed, paid in, transferred, and held: and the
7by-laws making these provisions, shall be forever
• binding on the Corporation. The Board shall also fix
upon the time for the first meeting of the stock-holders
for the election of olficers, the manner of voting, and
the number of votes to which each stock-holder shall
be entitled ; at which annual meetings the reports of
the Secretary and Treasurer shall be presented.

SECTION V.

No sale of lots in said Cemetery shall be made, until
at least fifty acres shall be laid off in suitable lots, and
a plot of the same filed in the Recorder’s office of St.
Louis county ; and at least thirty-three per centum of
the nett proceeds of all sales, shall be expended in
improving and embellishing the grounds, building suit-
able fences or walls around the same, and erecting
necessary buildings on the premises.

SECTION VI.

All deeds for the conveyance of lots in said Ceme-
tery, shall be signed by the President of said corpora-
tion, and attested by the Secretary, with the seal of
the corporation attached ; and the further certificate
of the Secretary, that the President executed the same
for the purpose therein mentioned, with the corporate
seal attached, shall be deemed a sufficient authentica-
tion of such deeds, in all Courts and places whatsoever.

SECTION VII.

It shall be lawful for said corporation, to take and
hold any grant or bequest of money or property in
trust, and to apply the same, or the income thereof,
under the direction of the Board of Trustees, for theimprovement of said Cemetery, or any portion thereof,
or in the erection or preservation of any tomb or mon-
ument, according to the terms of any such grant or
bequest; and any Court having equity jurisdiction for
the county of Saint Louis, shall have power to compel
the performance of any such trust, upon the application
of any lot owner in said Cemetery.

SECTION VIII.

Any person who shall wilfully destroy, injure, or
remove, any tomb or monument, or any grave-stone
placed in said Cemetery, or shall wilfully remove, de-
stroy, cut, break, or injure, any fence around, or any
railing, fence, tree, shrub, or plant, within the limits of
said Cemetery, or shall shoot off, or discharge any gun
or any other fire-arms within the said limits, shall be
deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall, upon con-
viction thereof before any Justice of the Peace, or
Court having jurisdiction of such cases within the
county of St. Louis, be fined not less than five dollars,
nor more than fifty dollars, according to the nature
and aggravation of the offence; and such offender shall
also be liable to an action of trespass, to be brought
before any Justice or court of competent jurisdiction,
in the name of said Corporation, to recover all damages
sustained by his or her unlawful act or acts; and such
money, when recovered and collected, shall be applied
by the Board of Directors to the reparation or resto-
ration of the property destroyed or injured; and in
such suits, members of the Corporation shall be com-
petent witnesses.SECTION IX.

Any person who shall wilfully open any vault or
grave within the limits of said Cemetery, for the pur-
pose . of robbing such grave or vault of any of the
clothes or materials placed therein with the corpse, or
who shall remove any body from said Cemetery for
the purpose of dissection, or who shall knowingly re-
ceive any such body after its removal, together with
all aiders and abettors, shall be deemed guilty of felony,
and upon conviction shall be punished by imprison-
ment in the Penitentiary for the term of two years.

SECTION X.

Said Cemetery is hereby declared exempt from all
taxes and assessments, so long as the same shall remain
dedicated to the purposes of a Cemetery.

SECTION XI.

In case the land selected for such Cemetery shall be
on or contiguous to any of the principal roads leading
out from the City of St. Louis, and beyond the portion
now M’Adamized, the said corporation may tender to
the County Court of Saint Louis County, any sum of
money, not less than two thousand dollars, nor more
than three thousand dollars, to be appropriated to the
extension oi the M’Adamizing upon such principal
road; and upon such tender being made, it shall be
the duty of said Court to appropriate a like sum; and
the sums so tendered and appropriated shall, without
delay, be expended by the said Court in the grading
and M’Adamizing of such road, in continuation of the
work already completed; and in consideration of suchsum being contributed towards such road by said Cor-
poration, all carriages and persons going to and re-
turning from burials in said Cemetery shall be exempt
from paying toll for traveling upon such road, between
said Cemetery and the City of Saint Louis.

SECTION XII.

This Act is hereby declared a public Act, and shall
take effect and be in force, from and after its passage;
and the Act entitled “An Act to Incorporate the Rural
Cemetery Association,” approved twenty-eighth Janu-
ary, eighteen hundred and forty-one, not having been
used, be, and the same is, hereby repealed.

Approved, March 1th, 1849.