Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/217

 Kensington Gardens, ornamented with a double row of aromatic trees, which afford a solemn and beautiful shade: in a word, not old Windsor Churchyard, with all its cypress and yews, is in the smallest degree comparable to them; and I quitted them with unspeakable reluctance.

"There is no difference between these two grounds, but in the expense of the monuments which denote that persons of large fortune are there interred, and vice versâ: whence, in order to preserve this difference in the appearance, the first ranks pay five hundred rupees, the second three hundred, for opening the ground; and they are disjoined merely by a broad road."

It is not quite clear whether the two burying-grounds thus described are those now known as the North and South Park Street burying-grounds, which lie opposite to each other on either side of Park Street, or whether the description applied to the older, the South Ground only. The earliest epitaph in the North Ground, given in that quaint compilation, the "Bengal Obituary ," is dated 1791, some six or seven years later than the period of the letters.

When the South Park Street Burying Ground was opened it was surrounded by fields, and was far in the country, though it is many years now