St. Nicholas Church has lately had two or three acres of ground added to it, which is laid out as a cemetery. This ground is on the steep side of a hill, with a terrace along the upper boundary, formed by a series of cells or catacombs, each of about the size of a common coach-house, and with large boarded doors, which rather remind us of the stable-yard than of the cemetery. The doors are too large; for though we speak of "the gates of death," the entrance to the tomb is generally made narrow, widest at bottom, and the door that closes it of stone or metal. In our opinion it would be a great improvement to remove these coach-house doors, and substitute others much narrower, and formed of one slab of slate, or of Caithness flagstone. The trees planted in this cemetery are horsechestnuts, limes, and other unsuitable kinds, instead of Pyrus Aria, sea buckthorn, the common elder, sycamore, the common and Irish yew, the evergreen oak, the Swedish juniper, &c. The flower-beds neither group with one another nor with any thing else. The soil, except a few inches on the surface, is naturally of pure chalk. The entrance to this cemetery is Roman, while the church to which it belongs and adjoins, and the catacombs it contains, are Gothic.
