THE BURIAL GROUND AT NEW-HAVEN.

BY B. EDWARDS, ESQ.

"Let vanity adorn the marble tomb

"With trophies, rhymes, and scutcheons of renown."

BEATTIE.

All country church yards are interesting, without being gloomy. If we could even forget GRAY'S ELEGY, and all the pleasure we have enjoyed in reading that charming composition, yet would an ancient rural place of tombs possess its attractions, so long as we retain a particle of sentimental or antiquarian curiosity in our souls.

And who, among Americans, has not heard of the beautiful cemetery of New-Haven? It has been the theme of more frequent praise among us than any other receptacle of the dead, save only the celebrated Pere La Chaise at Paris-the paragon of burial places; yet few, without seeing it, have formed any notion of its appearance; and such as have often walked through its poplar avenues, may perhaps be told of something they omitted to notice.

To this pretty spot, the verdant and decorated resting place of nu merous dead, I propose to conduct the attention of my gentle reader; and, possessing such qualification for a guide as local knowledge can supply, I hope to find some particulars, in the course of our ramble, that may be worth a few minutes of quiet, but not melancholy con templation.

We go to it as to a country church yard; for albeit, there is, in fact, no church hard by, and it is not quite in the country, nor, to speak without fear of giving offence, absolutely in a village; yet it must be so considered, or it can excite but little interest.

Nor is it any disparagement of the growing and wealthy city of its location, to say that the much admired burial ground retains its rural aspect and its village character. New-Haven has, indeed, been changed from a lovely village to a dull and ostentatious city; but the alteration is, in many respects, much for the worse. It has gained in three storied brick houses, and lofty stores, large hotels, and showy churches, besides a superb specimen of architectural simulation in the State House, with huge doric columns that pretend to be of marble, which they only mock, as Hamlet's players imitate human nature, "most abominably." We must likewise own, that boarding schools have multiplied, and barouches have superseded wagons; but alas! for the departed characteristics of a plainer age, the cottage-like dwellings, the peacefulness of the shaded

streets, the simplicity of manners and of dress, of hospitality and social intercourse, the pervading "ornament of a meek and quiet spirit," that made New-Haven a refreshment to the eye and to the heart of every visiter, accustomed to the noise and glare of larger towns.

In some parts, however, including the streets that lead immediately to the burial ground, the alteration is less obvious. The footways remain chiefly unpaved, and are shaded by lofty elms; the houses are mostly of the older pattern, and the birds have not been scared away from the neat enclosures.

The cemetery, itself, seems perfectly rural; for few houses are near it, and they are screened from view by umbrageous trees. It is a large and elevated plain, of more than fifteen acres, computing by the measurement of the eye alone, with a front of about two hundred yards. Almost every part of the ground commands an extensive prospect, reaching over the fields intersected by the new canal, and bounded by hills at the distance of some miles, covered with woods; the view embraces also the picturesque cliffs called West Rock, and is limited, in another direction, by a nearer elevation, upon which Mr. Hillhouse, of deserved celebrity in the literary world, has placed a conspicuous and elegant dwelling. The groves that mantle this eminence hide a part, only, of the crags and precipices of East Rock, and on three sides, at least, the landscape is such as a painter would love to remember.

The entrance is, in village fashion, free and unforbidden; no lockedup gates, as is the mode in cities, remind the visiter that grave yards may be sought with other purposes than those of harmless contemplation; and the many openings left in the white paling seem to invite an examination of the ground.

A space which occupies more than half the surface is thickly planted with poplars, that have outlasted the brief term during which that shortlived tree ever retains its beauty in our climate; they look sickly and blighted, but still give some shade, and serve to shew the original limits of the enclosure, which has been since enlarged by the addition of several acres.

Great part of the ground is plotted out into little parallelograms divided by a whitened strip of board fastened to low standing posts, and marked with the name of the head of the family for whose use each space is allotted; but the first glance impresses the stranger with the very unequal distribution of the monuments; some of which are clustered together so closely as almost to touch, while large intermediate vacancies yet wait for their destined tenants. The great proportion of tombs in the form of what is called by the stone cutters an obelisk, though certainly not much resembling the ancient structure of that name, is also very striking; but urns, placed on handsome pedestals, and many of them, very inappropriately, upon the pinnacle of a pyramidal support, are very common, and are mingled with a few cippi, or broken columns, and a small number of the classic Roman shape, surrounded with countless table monuments and upright slabs; in all of which the greatest variety of material may be seen, from the purest white marble

of Italy, and the beautiful green of the Milford quarry, to the ugly red sandstone, the sober brown, and the rough gray granite.

Entering from the corner nearest to the centre of the town, the stranger is attracted toward a cluster of monuments that are crowded very closely together, and he is induced to pass by a number of tombs in order to see why so many occupy so confined a space. It is the portion of ground originally allotted to Yale College, but with a very insufficient consideration of the casualties to which students, as well as their teachers, are liable. Young men are apt enough to suppose, as to their own fate, it is very improbable that death will think of them, who so rarely bestow a thought on him, but the sober minded elders that planned this receptacle, must have been strangely forgetful of the lessons upon life's uncertainty, so commonly presented by tomb stones. Already the designated space is covered with marble structures, and a supplemental lot is appropriated for the College, in the new part of the cemetery.

Of the youths here commemorated, some appear to have died far away from their friends and homes: there is additional sadness in the idea of death under such circumstances, especially for the young. On these costly monuments we find the names of youths from Louisiana, Mississippi, both Carolinas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, and New-York, besides some whose residence had been less remote. But the whole number is not so great as to speak against the salubrity of the College.

It is surprising, indeed, that so few students die in all such institutions. When we think how often emulation excites to excessive efforts, how little attention has been, generally, paid to gymnastic excrcises, how the young stomach is tasked to make up by vigor of digestion, for the neglectful cookery of a college kitchen, and how much the immature constitution is racked by the dissipation into which all, but the extremely studious, are more or less enticed to enter, by the example which the young freshman finds established in the habits of the higher classes; the marvel, after all, is that so much is borne and so many go safely through not that a few should fall victims to the experiment.

New-Haven is now so populous, that it affords an abundance of every kind of pleasure that can allure young men into pernicious indulgence. Unguarded youth is not always proof against such temptations; and the evil is perhaps inseparable from all seminaries thus situated. If young men must be withdrawn from the eyes of parents, and lodged, for the purpose of education, in large numbers together, the safer place for such a collection of combustibles will ever be in a village so small as not to supply the means of dissipation. The safest position, of all, is at home; and a College placed in the midst of a large city, where the students continue to reside under the watchful observance of elder friends, is less perilous, though it may not afford so great an opportunity for varied instruction.

But, what heresy is this? Can anything be thought of within the walls of a Presbyterian College, besides Greek, and mathematics, and philosophy, with a little poetry or theology for recreation? Yes; much beside all this; and it were silly affectation to deny it. The op

portunity of improvement is given, but tutors can do no more. Many a bottle of wine has been opened under the roof of Mother Yale; and many a larking expedition has been started from the inspiration thus derived. The memoirs of Dr. Dwight set forth how much temptation he had to resist, in his collegiate course; and if any of the present under-graduates ever come to the honor of a biography, a similar claim may perhaps be justly alleged in his behalf.

Yet it is a good school, and deserves our best wishes. Three hundred and fifty students now compose its four regular classes, besides a few attendants upon the lectures in the departments of law, medicine, and divinity. Of the whole number, about two thirds are natives of Connecticut ; and very few, indeed, come from the states beyond the Dela

ware.

Let us turn our attention to the tombs again. Here lies a very celebrated man-TIMOTHY DWIGHT; who swayed the sceptre of the College from 1795 till 1817, and closed a life, of extraordinary influence over the minds of his compeers, at the still vigorous age of sixtyfour, and in the unfaded lustre of his fame. One incident of his life and character is really wonderful; it is stated that when but twentythree years old he lost the use of his eyes, so as seldom afterwards to be able to read or write more than fifteen minutes in the twenty-four hours, and yet, in spite of this most serious impediment, he became one of the most learned theologians, and voluminous authors in the world.

His published system of theology is valued, both here and in Great Britain, as the most complete and erudite in the English language; and his sermons, though chiefly penned by an amanuensis from his oral dictation, are remarkable for purity of style, and condensation of thought.

The elegant green marble obelisk, that is inscribed with his epitaph, in the Latin language, and with gilded letters, seems appropriate to the richness (so to speak,) of his living character, and the stately dignity perhaps a little excessive, of his personal deportment. He certainly never forgot that he was a president; but it is also true, that he was not less mindful of his duties than of his dignities.

His theological doctrines are threatened with an eclipse, by the more recent teachings of the very schools that he labored to rear; but his writings will be sought for, as a rich mine of biblical learning and controversial logic, even by those who withhold their assent from his conclusions; and the "admodum reverendus," carved upon his monument, will be allowed to have been a just tribute of respect, long after the gilding of the letters shall be worn away from the marble.

Close by this tomb, stands that of his predecessor EZRA STILES, also a man of high estimation in his day. The precursor of " Stiles, was the reverend and learned Mr. Thomas Clap, a truly great man," according to the record of his tomb stone, The president of a College was in the last century, ex-officio, a "great man," and Clap may individually have merited the title fully; but he died in 1767, and his name is already fading in the twilight of antiquity-for even such true greatness does not secure an immortality of fame.

And here is a tomb that deserves the notice of every man that values purity of purpose and refinement of sentiment, as things not often met with in this world. Beneath this obelisk of verd antique, or Milford marble, are placed the remains of MATTHEW DUTTON, than whom a better or a kindlier man may not be easily found. The gentlest teacher, and, in his earlier years, particularly successful in forming the female mind, he succeeded in imparting great purity of moral taste along with the soundest practical instruction. He died in 1825; and his epitaph is worth a perusal, for it is all true; and that, perhaps, is no common praise.

"Professor Dutton was greatly distinguished for strength of intellect and for the clearness and precision with which he communicated his ideas to others, for amiableness of disposition, and faithfulness in the discharge of every duty. He graduated at Yale College 1808, and was a tutor from 1810 to 1814; was a minister of the congregational church at Stratford from 1814 to 1822, and from that time till his death, was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Yale College. Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my end be like his.

The most remarkable of these college monuments, in point of appearance, is that of Dr. NATHAN SMITH, professor of Surgery, a man of distinction in his profession, and father of the accomplished professor Smith, of the Baltimore Medical School. The monument is of dark stone, and is modelled after the tomb of Scipio, so familiar to us in the pictures of Roman antiquities. There are two others, of the same style, in this cemetery; under one are the remains of ELI WHITNEY, the illustrious inventor of the cotton-gin, certainly the most beneficial mechanical improvement ever made by American ingenuity, excepting, only, the application of steam to the purposes of navigation.

The other of these copies of Scipio's tomb, was erected by the Colonization Society, in honor of ASHMAN, their first agent at Liberia. He died here at an early age, a victim to the unwholesome climate to which he had been led by his philanthropic spirit, and whence he returned too late to recover from its fatal effects.

These Roman tombs, though very showy, are unsuitable for their purpose; the space for inscription is small, and yet the whole structure is inconveniently large.

In saying that Mr. Dutton's epitaph is true, I would not imply that any one of the many around us is not so; but it is difficult to believe that they are all impartial in the estimates of character which they hold up to our admiration. If half are true, New-Haven must have been singularly blessed in the virtues of her sons and daughters, for a greater number of perfectly good men and saintlike women appear to have been buried here; than ever were known to live within any hundred leagues square of the earth's surface. But the language of fond and exaggerated eulogium, is often the only way in which the mourner can give sorrow vent.

"The grief that does not speak," says Shakspeare, "whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.”