Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/220

 since the ever-widening boundaries of the town passed far beyond. A road was constructed along which funerals might pass to it through fields and by outlying hamlets. This road, known to Modern Calcutta as Park Street, was called Burying Ground Road, and many were the mournful processions which slowly trod its dreary length, as described by Miss Goldborne:—

"Funerals are indeed solemn and affecting things at Calcutta," she wrote, "no hearses being here introduced, or hired mourners employed; for as it often happens, in the gay circles, that a friend is dined with one day and the next is in eternity, the feelings are interested, the sensations awful, and the mental question, for the period of interment at least, which will be tomorrow's victim? The departed one, of whatever rank, is carried on men's shoulders (like your walking funerals in England), and a procession of gentlemen, equally numerous and respectable from the extent of genteel connections, following—the well-situated and the worthy being universally esteemed and caressed while living, and lamented when dead."

One of the most conspicuous monuments in the South Ground is that which marks the grave of Sir William Jones, and bears the following epitaph, remarkable no less for the noble