the rate rules evenly, the date when any particular stone may be expected to vanish.  In confirmation of this theory is the fact that scarcely any headstones are discoverable of a date earlier than 1650, and whenever they have been left to their fate the veterans of 150 years have scarcely more than their heads above ground.  Wherever we find otherwise, it may be assumed that conscientious church officers or pious parishioners have bethought them of the burial-ground, lifted up the old stones and set them once more on their feet.  Of recent years there has grown up and been fostered a better feeling for the ancient churchyards, and the ivy-clad churches of Hornsey and Hendon may be cited as examples familiar to Londoners in which the taste engendered by a beautiful edifice has influenced for good its surroundings.  In both churchyards are many eighteenth-century stones in excellent preservation.  Neither place, however, has yet been “restored” or “reformed” in the modern sense, and there is no reason why it should be.  In many places, as the town grows and spreads, it is well to convert the ancient graveyard into a public garden, so that it be decently and reverently done.  But this ought never to be undertaken needlessly or heedlessly.  There are scruples of individuals to be regarded, and a strong case ought always to exist before putting into effect such a radical change.  But it usually happens that transformation is the only remedy, and nothing short of a thorough reaction will rescue God’s Acre from the ruin and contempt into which it has fallen.  Yet we should ever remember that, whatever we may do to the surface, it is still the place where our dead fathers rest.

  “Earth to earth and dust to dust,
  Here lie the evil and the just,
  Here the youthful and the old,
  Here the fearful and the bold,
  Here the matron and the maid,
  In one silent bed are laid.”

The utilitarian impulse, though frequently blamed for the “desecration” of our churchyards, is really less accountable for these conversions than the culpable neglect which in too many cases has forced the only measure of correction.  Therefore they who would keep the sacred soil unmolested should take heed that it be properly maintained.  A churchyard is in hopeful case when we see the mounds carefully levelled, the stones set up in serried ranks, and the turf between rolled smooth and trimmed and swept.  There is no outrage in levelling the ground.  The Christian feeling which clings to the grave, and even to the gravestone, does not attach to the mound of earth which is wrongly called the grave.  This mound is not even a Christian symbol.  It is a mere survival of Paganism, being a small copy of the barrow or tumulus, of which we have specimens still standing in various parts of our islands and the Continent, to mark the sepulchres of prehistoric and possibly savage chieftains.  No compunction should be, and probably none is, suffered when we remove the grave-mounds,