To these so mourned in death, so loved in life, The childless parent and the widowed wife, With tears inscribes this monumental stone, That holds their ashes, _and expects her own_. Almost, however, before "the monumental stone" was finished, the disconsolate widow dried her eyes, and married a gallant colonel of dragoons, without considering that she was spoiling the beauty of her husband’s epitaph. Among the most flagrant instances of false taste, we must specify that on the tomb of David Garrick. The tomb itself has been described as "a theatrical conceit, of which the design exhibits neither taste nor invention." The epitaph was the production of Pratt, author of Harvest Home and other lucubrations which have long since been consigned to the tomb of the Capulets; and both epitaph and monument are thus spoken of by Charles Lamb in the _Essays of Elia_. Alluding principally to the eccentric attitude of the actor’s effigy, he observes, "Though I would not go so far, with some good Catholics abroad, as to shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this burlesque figure a farrago of false thought and nonsense." The farrago in question is in verse, and represents Shakspeare and Garrick as "twin stars," who as long as time shall last are to "irradiate earth with a beam divine." There are but few epitaphs in St. Paul’s Cathedral—the other great resting-place of illustrious dead—worthy of remark or reproduction. The best in the whole edifice, and one of the most perfect compositions of its kind, is the well-known inscription commemorative of its renowned architect, Sir Christopher Wren: Subditus conditur hujus Ecelesiæ at Urbis Conditor, CHRISTOPHERUS WREN, qui vixit Annos ultra nonaginta, non sibi, sed Bono publico. _Lector, si monumentum requiris,_ _Circumspice._ We need not point out the beauties of this celebrated epitaph:—its terseness of phraseology (to which no translation could do justice)—its suggestiveness, grandeur and dignity. Another Latin inscription in St. Paul’s is also deserving notice, both on account of its merit, and the individual it commemorates—that on Dr. Samuel Johnson, written by the famous Dr. Parr. Of English inscriptions in this Cathedral, the most striking is that on the monument of John Howard. It concludes with the well-known sentence: "He trod an open and unfrequented path,to immortality, in the ardent and unremitting exercise of Christian charity. May this tribute to his fame excite an emulation of his truly glorious achievements."