The profusion of fresh flowers in Italian graveyards amazed nineteenth-century travellers from America used to more severe practices. In England, too, flowers were sparse. Nor was their paucity unintentional. Strong sentiments were involved, for despite the increasing pomp of Victorian funerals, much ambivalence was displayed about elaborate rituals and offerings in the Anglo-American world—“a green grassy turf is all I crave,” wrote Beattie in the Minstrel. Even Loudon, the great architect of the new rural cemeteries in England, was reluctant to make a place for flowers in his plans.