Lovers of the grotesque, the humorous or the pathetic in mortuary literature will find little here to gratify their taste. With characteristic Scottish reserve the inscriptions do little else, as a rule, than commemorate names and dates. Occasionally a note of pathos is struck; when verse is introduced it is generally confined to a portion of a psalm or a paraphrase. Scriptural texts are of course very frequent, but it has not been thought necessary to reproduce these in the present rendering of the inscriptions. Stilted epitaphs, full of turgid encomium, are commendably rare. One gentleman does not entrust the task of framing his eulogium to his surviving relatives or executors; it is therefore recorded on his monument that " when dying he desired that if any epitaph should be written on him it should simply be that his conduct in life met with the approbation of his own mind at the hour of death." This amazing specimen of selfrighteousness is however unique in the record.
