“If innocents are the fav’rites of heaven,
  And God but little asks where little’s given,
  My great Creator has for me in store
  Eternal joys—­What wise man can ask more?”

The gravestone at Handsworth was “under the chancel window,” sixty years ago, overgrown with moss and weeds, but inscription and stone have long since gone.  Baskerville’s own epitaph, on the Mausoleum in his grounds at Easy Hill, has often been quoted:—­

    ’Stranger,
  Beneath this cone, in unconsecrated ground,
  A friend to the liberties of mankind directed his body to be inurned. 
  May the example contribute to emancipate thy mind
  From the idle fears of Superstition,
  And the wicked Act of Priesthood!

Almost as historical as the above, is the inscription on the tombstone erected over Mary Ashford, at Sutton Coldfield:—­

As a Warning to Female Virtue, And a humble Monument of Female Chastity, This Stone marks the Grave of MARY ASHFORD, Who, in the 20th year of her age, Having incautiously repaired To a scene of amusement Without proper protection, Was brutally violated and murdered, On the 27th May, 1817.

  Lovely and chaste as is the primrose pale,
  Rifled of virgin sweetness by the gale,
  Mary!  The wretch who thee remorseless slew,
  Will surely God’s avenging wrath pursue.

  For, though the deed of blood be veiled in night,
  “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
  Fair, blighted flower!  The muse, that weeps thy doom,
  Rears o’er thy sleeping dust this warning tomb!

The following quaint inscription appears on the tombstone erected in memory of John Dowler, the blacksmith, in Aston churchyard:—­

  Sacred to the Memory of
  JOHN DOWLER,
  Late of Castle Bromwich, who
  Departed this life December 6th, 1787,
  Aged 42,
  Also two of his Sons, JAMES and CHARLES,
  Who died infants.

  My sledge and hammer lie reclined,
  My bellows, too, have lost their wind
  My fire’s extinct, my forge decayed,
  And in the dust my vice is laid;
  My coal is spent, my iron gone,
  My nails are drove, my work is done.

The latter part of the above, like the next four, has appeared in many parts of the country, as well as in the local burial grounds, from which they have been copied:—­

From St. Bartholomew’s: 

  “The bitter cup that death gave me
  Is passing round to come to thee.”

From General Cemetery: 

  “Life is a city full of crooked streets,
  Death is the market-place where all men meets;
  If life were merchandise which men could buy,
  The rich would only live, the poor would die.”

From Witton Cemetery: 

  “O earth, O earth! observe this well—­
  That earth to earth shall come to dwell;
  Then earth in earth shall close remain,
  Till earth from earth shall rise again.”