Note 33 — INTERMENTS IN TOWNS. (continued 5)

The neglect of the cemeteries at Paris, and especially of those portions dedicated to the interment of the poorer classes, has been the subject of public complaint, and means are now being taken to redress them. A friend, who aided me with some inquiries in respect to them, states,—

The English tourist in visiting Père la Chaise is attracted by splendid monuments in the midst of cypress trees, and little gardens filled with flowers planted round a majority of the tombs; but the graves of the humbler classes lie beyond these, and to them the stranger is seldom conducted. The contrast is painful. When I last visited Père la Chaise, on a fine day in November, and after a week of unusually fine weather for the season, I found the paths quite impracticable in the poorer quarter of the cemetery, and as I watched a man, in the usual blouse dress worn by the working class, picking his way through the mud to lead his little boy to pray over the grave of his mother, I could but deplore the economy of an administration which had neglected to provide, at least, a dry gravel path for the humble and pious mourner.