Danbury Times

For the Times.

GREENWOOD CEMETERY.

As some of the citizens of Danbury have in contemplation the subject of a cemetery, I was induced while in New York to visit Greenwood. This beautiful and hallowed spot is situated on Long Island, about four miles from Brooklyn. It would be difficult to find a place better adapted to such a design. It is composed entirely of hill and dell, with here and there a little pond or fountain. Art has no doubt greatly altered its natural appearance, for the hillocks have been pared and rounded off, and new turfed. All these improvements have not been completed. Large numbers of workmen are engaged in adorning it, and erecting monuments. Portions of it are shaded by tall old trees, under which the majestic obelisk rears its head towards heaven. The monuments are as various as the taste of man. A short distance from the entrance on your left, stands a mimic Grecian Temple; a little further on, one in the Gothic style. There is but little display of sculpture or decorations, All is simple and solemn.

One grave never fails to attract and detain the visiter. It is the tomb of Charlotte Canda. There is something so mournfully sweet about it, and so touchingly melancholy in her fate, that I shall detain my readers with a relation of her death. She was the only child of a French gentleman of Brooklyn, who lavished on her the most endearing fondness which she lovingly repaid. On the evening of her 17th birth day she had invited her young friends to meet her, and desiring to procure something for the festival, she called in her father's coach at a store. While the coachman stepped into a store, the unattended horses took fright and ran. Charlotte sprang from the carriage and was dashed violently on the pavement, and was taken up dead. On her 17th birthday she was born in heaven. On the southwestern slope of a gentle hill, on which the departing sun from out his crimson couch can shed his last glorious rays, her father has erected a tomb. It represents a niche in a gothic temple under which stands her statue clothed in the habiliments of death, Her countenance expresses such 'amazing sweetness and deep love,' that the most hardened cannot view it unmoved. On her right and left, and a little below the niche, are the statues of two angels in the attitude of adoration. Her father is a Catholic, and of course believes in invocations to the saints. To a Protestant it seems impious that angels should adore the dead, It is said her father has offered a large sum of money to have the space enclosed around her grave consecrated. Bishop Hughes refuses, because heretics are buried in the same cemetery. No act of consecration— no imposing ceremony, can render that spot more hallowed than it is now.

'To incantations dost thou trust,
And pompous rites in domes august ?
See mouldering stones and metals rust
Belie the vaunt,
That man can bless one pile of dust
With chime or chaunt,' Campbell.

Such sentiments Bishop Hughes would call infidel. Well be it so. I would rather be called an infidel, for such opinions, than a bigot for their contrary.

The amount already expended on the grounds must be nearly $100,000. People who accumulate money to die rich will pronounce this extravagant folly. It is certain, that, in no country I have read of, is there so little attention paid to the last repose of the dead as in our enlightened christian country. And it is so, because of the prevalence of the above idea, of some people. But a spirit more congenial with the humane principles and glorious views of christianity is abroad, and has reached us, I am happy to say Danbury. I do not expect we shall be able to equal Greenwood, with beauty or expense, but it will spare us at least, the necessity of disturbing the repose of others, that we may be committed to our mother earth,

Such is the crowded state of one of our yards that the sexton says he has exhumed the dead in digging graves. It is to be hoped that now they will be closed, and some attempt made to cover up their hideousness. At least, let trees be set out.

D. B.