Eternity is usually, as we have seen, represented by an endless ring--often as a serpent. It is so in the Southfleet sketch, in which appear the two horns of the archangels, and the living torch, with some other objects which are not quite clearly defined. FIG. 46.--AT SOUTHFLEET. "To John Palmer, died 1781, aged 61 years." In another selection from Wilmington the winged hour-glass may be read as the flight of time, the cloud is probably the future life, and the bones below convey their customary moral. FIG. 47.--AT WILMINGTON. "To Ann Parsons, died Nov. 3, 1777, aged 60 years." Sometimes, but not often, will be found engraved on a stone the suggestive fancy of an axe laid at the foot of a tree, or some metaphorical figure to the same intent. An instance occurs at Lewisham in which the idea is conveyed by the pick and shovel under a flourishing palm. FIG. 48.--AT LEWISHAM. "To Thomas Lambert, died Nov. 25, 1781, aged 59 years." A symbol so simple and yet so significant as this is scarcely to be surpassed. One almost in the same category is the following, a small anaglyph in Bunhill Fields Burial-ground, London. FIG. 49.--AT BUNHILL FIELDS, LONDON. "To Elizabeth Sharp, who died Oct. 20, 1752, aged 31 years." It is easy to read in this illustration the parable of death destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant. It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. But Bunhill Fields and similar places in and near London and other great towns have taught me the law to which I have already referred--the law that the picture-tombstone was country bred, and could never have endured under the modern conditions of life in or near the centres of civilization. There are exceptions, perhaps many, to this ruling, as there are exceptions to every other. For instance, a stone at the grave of a Royal Artillery Officer in Woolwich Churchyard combines the emblems of his earthly calling with those of his celestial aspirations in a medley arrangement not unusual in rural scenes, but hardly to be reconciled with the education and refinement of a large garrison and school of military science which Woolwich was in 1760. This must be set down as one of the exceptions which prove the rule. FIG. 50.--AT WOOLWICH. "To Lieut. Thomas Sanders, late of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, who died March 1760, aged 60 (?) years."