Mr Parnell's Grave.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7182, 18 January 1892, Page 4

Mr Parnell's Grave.

* A recent visitor to Mr Parnell's grave writes : — " There ia the centre of a wide open space stand a crowd of people— not of the dirty, low, rough element, but persons evidently in the middle walk of life, and, singular to Bay, a throng formed of eight or nine women to every man. All around, for a radius of fifty or a hundred yards, the graaa is trodden down. On the wee hillock in the centre, fenced in with the most primitive of hedge stakee, and protected 'by ropes, more suggestive of what one would fancy a prize ring to he, is an enclosed space of ten yards or so either way. Within this is the grave iteelf — large and raised. All around are wreaths and crosses, moat of them fresh, and bright flowers and foliage, but some of an artificial kind that seem popular with many, but which, I confess, find no favour in my eyes. The ground within the ropes has been neatly sodded, and these mementoes — I counted seventyeight of them— are all arranged neatly and in order, the artificial affairs under glass already alluded to forming the four flanks. Just as I arrived a large package from Mrs Parnell, at Brighton, was brought by four ladies. It was addressed in the same handwriting: as the immortelle card, on which ia inscribed, " My lovo, my husband, my king! from your broken-hearted wife." The address on the package was to " Mra Clancy, 53, Kutland square, Dublin." With the flowera it contained a recumbent cross and an erect Maltese one. At fcho head of the grave the flowers were tastily arranged by a young married lady (presumably Mrs Clancy) and her attendant friends. Around— -respectfully and quietly — were from sixty to eighty spectators. Ever and again a spectator would beg of the cemetery-keeper a flower or a Leaf to cherish in remembrance of the one who was lying beneath, or maybe to send to some distant son of Erin resident in the Colonies. At the foot of the grave, placed thero the day previously, I learned, was a large heart measuring about eighteen inches by two feet, and composed entirely of growing shamrocks. Upon this lay a green silk badge with a harp embroidered thereon in gold, and the initials " C.S.P." Across and under the heart was a seven-teenth-century rapier— evidently an old heirloom — and about and around were 3ashes intertwined between two boughs of laurel, which formed the mantling, as it ia termed in heraldry — that is, the background of the whole. Upon a card attached :o this exceedingly artistic tropky was written :— "When comes the day all hearts to weigh, If staunch tbsv l>a or Tile, Shall we forget the saored debt Wo owe our Motber Isle ?