Against these unhealthy graveyards sentence has been pronounced: they are doomed to be closed. It is useless for selfish and mercenary men to oppose the fiat which has gone forth, for the air of this mighty city has too long been poisoned through men who live by the dead. Let us create a good out of this evil; and after these unhealthy churchyards have been closed long enough to destroy the injurious exhalations which have of late numbered so many of the living with the dead, then let the grounds be planted with trees and flowers, and they will become sweet breathing-places, like our squares, and amid the brick walls call up images of the far-away country. The old monuments need not be disturbed. To see the drooping branches of a green tree falling over them, will add to their beauty and solemnity; and in the centre of our cities we can wander among groves rendered sacred by the remains of our forefathers,--can in the dim twilight-shadows which the flickering leaves will ever make, hold communion with the spirit of John Bunyan, while we peruse his immortal work in the burying-ground of Bunhill-fields; for by such association would these spots become hallowed. Nor would the records of the dead, who sleep without the walls of the church, be held less sacred, if their names were engraven on marble tablets, and placed within the consecrated buildings around which their dust would repose, beneath beds of blowing flowers and close-leaved evergreens. The old grey weather-beaten tombs of the founders of charities would look more venerable overtopped by the tall elm, the sable yew, or the weeping willow, that seems ever to droop sadly above the dead. No busy builder should ever be permitted to rear a wall within these sacred enclosures, or disturb the robin that would pipe his sweet anthem in autumn, or drive away the belted bee, that would come over the high houses from some distant meadow, to make a plaintive murmur in the heart of this vast city as he flew in and out among the flowers that waved above these old households of the dead.