Some Epitaphs.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 128, 14 November 1885, Page 6

Some Epitaphs.

In one church, even as we wore passing the organ-loft, our guide can point out a curious monument to an organ-blower. " Tobacco fas hated — to smoke most unwilling, yet never so pleased as when pipes he was filling j" so runs his elegant epitaph, continu ing— "No reflection on him for rude speech could be cast, though he gave our old organist many a blast." In a neighbouring church the sexton can show an inscription on a monument to another ecclesiastical official :— " Here lies interred beneath these stones, ye beard, ye flesh, and eke ye bones Of '8 clerk, old Daniel Jones." In a church further south the clergyman himself is thus immortalised on a tombstone:— " Hurrah, my boys, at the parson's fall, for if he'd lived he'd a-buried us all." A little to the west, again, the squire comes in for poetical commemoration :—": — " Here lies Sir , clad in his clay ; God said to the devil, Sirrah, take him away." Sometimes inscriptions on tombstones, instead of being epitaphs, are intended to awaken the sinner. In certain districts these are very common. It would be wearisome, though easy, to multiply instances of them ; but the following, which occurs on a tablet in a church whose bells we have already noticed, may suffice: — "FMeshe and blode as Vow are so was I. Dust and Assess as I am see shall Vow be " As a concise statement of fact, the following inscription on a neighbouring tombstone is a fair specimen: — "Here lie three children dear, Two at and one here." Those who visit the churchyard referred to might find a eulogium on the tomb of a French prisoner of war. written by one of his compatriots in Latin more canine than classical, which so enraged an oil schoolmaster that he exclaimed, "I should like to have the flogging of the man who wrote that epitaph." On a gravestone in the same district an affectionate wife of former days commemorated her husband in the following deeply religious -words: — "A greeter blessing to a umman never mor was givn, Nor a greeter loss eksept the loss of heavn " A parent in the adjoining county makes two {children thus speak for themselves :— " Spotless from guilt, the Lord He took we hence, Toreign with Christ, nottoreturnfrom thence. MomentoMory." In a neighbouring parish a memorial tablet laments a man who "died of a chronic abscess in his right side." It is a common thing to find assurances of the strict orthodoxy of the deceased in monumental inscriptions. An epitaph over the remains of a certain high sheriff of one of the counties already noticed, who died early in the eighteenth century, described him as having been valued when living, and much lamented when dead, chiefly because it had been " his manner " " heartily to declare against the upstart Sect of the Brain-Sick Methodists." Very different is the simple announcement on the gravestone of a poor man who died almost in the same year, and in the same county, at the age of 104 :—": — " Interred hear, lies one hundred years and four ; No one knew Scripture less and virture more ; Peace his ambition, contentment was his wealth." In the centre of the district that we have been exploring we find a monument bearing an inscription which, without any breach of charity, may be called a little high-flown. After announcing that it stands over the remainß of Elizabeth, wife of R. 8., it adds thatß. 8., "the anti-spouse uxorious," whatever that may mean, was also "interred here;" and then it bursts out as follows : — When terrestrial all in chaos shall exhibit effervesoence, The celestial virtues, with their full, effulgent, brilliant essence. Shall with beaming, beauteouaradianoe, through ebulition shine, Transcending to glorious regions, beatifical sublime. And much more of the same sort of stuff. — «*« * Saturday Review. "