From Joseph Story's address at the consecration of Mount Auburn Cemetery

A rural cemetery seems to combine in itself all the advantages, which can be proposed to gratify human feelings, or tranquillize human fears; to secure the best religious influences, and to cherish all those associations, which cast a cheerful light over the darkness of the grave.

…Ascend but a few steps and what a change of scenery to surprise and delight us. We seem, as it were in an instant, to pass from the confines of death, to the bright and balmy regions of life. Below us flows the winding Charles with this rippling current, like the stream of time hastening to the ocean of eternity. In the distance, the City, at once the object of our admiration and our love, rears its proud eminences, its glittering spires, its lofty towers, its graceful mansions, its curling smoke, its crowded haunts of business and pleasure, which speak to the eye, and yet leave a noiseless loneliness in the ear….

Let us banish, then, the thought, that this is to be the abode of gloom, which will haunt the imagination by its terrors, or chill the heart by its solitude. Let us cultivate feelings and sentiments more worthy of ourselves… Here let the brave repose, who have died in cause of their country. Here let the statesman rest, who has achieved the victories of peace, not less renowned than war. Here let genius find a home... here, let the good, the merciful, the meek, the pure in heart, be congregated; for to them belongs an undying praise….

"An Address Delivered on the Dedication of the Cemetery at Mount Auburn, September 24, 1831" (Joseph and Edwin Buckingham, 1831).