For the most part, however, there was nothing to give gross offence to the eye.  Gray, in his charming elegy, used words exactly expressive of the ordinary truth, when he called it ‘this neglected spot.’  It was tranquil enough, and suggestive of pensive meditation, shaded perhaps by rugged elms or melancholy yews; but the grass was probably rank and untended, and the ground a confused medley of shapeless heaps.  Except in epitaphs, there were no particular signs of tenderness and care; no flowers, no shrubs, no crosses.  The revival of care for our beauty and comeliness of churches, and the example of well-kept cemeteries, have combined, since the time of the last of the Georges, to effect an improvement in the general aspect of our churchyards, which was certainly very much needed.  Culpable neglect, it may be added, was sometimes shown in the admission of jesting or profane epitaphs.  The inscription on Gay’s monument in Westminster Abbey is a well-known example.  One other instance, in illustration, will be abundantly sufficient.  Imagine the carelessness of supervision which could allow the following buffoonery to be set up (1764) in the cathedral churchyard of Winchester:—­

    Here rests in peace a Hampshire grenadier
    Who kill’d himself by drinking poor small beer;
    Soldier, be warned by his untimely fall,
    And when you’re hot, drink strong, or none at all.[967]

In Wales, and in a few places in the south and west of England, the custom still lingered of planting graves with flowers and sweet herbs:—­

      Two whitened flintstones mark the feet and head;
    While there between full many a simple flower,
      Pansy and pink, with languid beauty smile;
    The primrose opening at the twilight hour,
      And velvet tufts of fragrant camomile.[968]

Pepys makes mention of a churchyard near Southampton where the graves were accustomed to be all sown with sage.[969]

Before leaving the subject of church fabrics and their immediate surroundings, some little mention should be made of the effort made at the beginning of the century to supply the deficiency of churches in London.  ‘After some pause,’ writes Addison, in one of his Roger de Coverley papers, ’the old knight, turning about his head twice or thrice to take a survey of the great metropolis, bid me observe how thick the City was set with churches, and that there was scarce a single steeple on this side Temple Bar.  “A most heathenish sight!” said Sir Roger.  “There is no religion at this end of the town.  The fifty new churches will very much mend the prospect, but church work is slow, very slow."’[970] That growth of London, which was to bring within its vast embrace village after village and hamlet after hamlet, was already fast progressing, and in the early part of the century had greatly outstripped all church provision.  Dean Swift, it is said, has the credit of having first aroused public attention to this want.  In a paragraph