CEMETERIES AND CHURCHYARDS. From the Quarterly Review. the struggle no less of the natural than of the spiritual man; and one people, by the art of embalmment, has endeavored to escape 1. A Supplementary Report on the Results the corruption which others have preventof a Special Inquiry into the Practice of ed by fire. While the piety of natural reliInterment in Towns, made at the request gion has made inan's last want his greatest, of Her Majesty's principal Secretary of and looked upon the violator of the dead as of Her Majesty's principal Secretary of the worst enemy of the living, a yet earlier State for the Home Department. By State for the Home Department. By tradition has inspired him to escape the Edwin Chadwick, Esq., Barrister-atcurse of the worm, and the return to the Law. London. 1843. dust from whence he sprung. To the latand Rome, the pyramids and mummies of ter bear witness the cinerary urns of Greece Egypt, the decorated chamber-tombs of locomotive corpses of the Scythians; while Etruria, perhaps also the gilded skulls and Priam, Polydorus, Antigone, and Archytas exemplify the honor of the rites of burial; and the taboced plots of New Zealand, and the cairns of the Esquimaux, are the ex 2. On the Laying out, Planting, and Managing of Cemeteries, and on the Improvement of Churchyards. By J. C. Loudon, F. L. S., &c. London. 1843. 5. Remarks on the Origin and Evils of treme links of the chain of eternal and uni versal piety which hallows the sepulchres of What recks it, though his corse may lie The bird that tears that prostrate form 'SPLENDID in ashes and pompous in the * Man has sometimes built himself grave,'* an argument of immortality from the grandeur of his tomb; and the desire to preserve a festering body and a fading name from utter decay, has been drawn into a natural The history of Revealed Religion exhibevidence of the incorruption of the soul. its to us a middle and a better way; neiBut a splendid monument speaks as much ther indifferent nor over-scrupulous as to of the dread of annihilation as of the hope the fate of the mortal body, avoiding at of a resurrection; and the love of posthu-once the outcasting to the beasts of the mous fame, whether in pyramids or in the field, and the expensive carefulness of the mouths of men, is at best but a proof of the funeral pyre. The rite of interment, in its longing after' an immortality of which it literal sense of consigning a body to the gives no sign. The worm below mocks at ground, is indeed a singular recognition of the masonry above; the foundation of our the ancient curse, 'Dust thou art, and unto monuments, as of our houses, is in the dust; dust shalt thou return; for though other and the nameless pyramid, and the broken nations have, for a while and in a degree, urn, and the 'mummy become merchan-used this custom, the unbroken tradition of dize,' are as true a page in the history of the the Jewish people alone observed it in its noble animal,' as his grandest efforts of completeness and simplicity. The cave of mind or hand after a diuturnity of mem- Macpelah was purchased as a buryingory.' place by the Father of the Faithful; and To baffle the powers of Death has been *Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.'Sir T. Browne's Urn-burial, ch. v. AUGUST, 1844. 29 * It is curious that this very expression, as applied to the vulture, should have been condemned by Longinus in the Sophist Gorgias, 1500 years Γύπες ἔμψυχοι τάφοι. before Byron wrote it. Long., ii. 2. It is not probable that the noble poet had seen the passage of either rhetorician. close by his side the bones of Joseph, after being borne by the children of Israel in their wanderings in the wilderness, rested in peace; and it seems no fortuitous emblem of God's people, as strangers and pilgrims upon earth, that their first possession in the land of promise should be a tomb. The case of Jonathan and Saul-and there are a few others recorded in Holy Writwhose bones were burned-was a clear exception to their general usage, and even in this case the ashes were afterwards inhumed. But while the children of the Promise preserved inviolate the ancient rite of interment, and eschewed pompous monuments and vain epitaphs, their yet indistinct perception of a resurrection, the dawn only of a brighter day, was not allowed to penetrate the veil which hung over the grave, though even that was a pillar of light to them compared to the cloud and darkness which it was to the Gentiles. Ere the stone was rolled away from the sepulchre, death had still its defilement, and mourning its sackcloth and ashes. galling to the heathen and apostate emperors, than the undesponding psalmody of their funeral processions and their devout thanksgiving at the tomb. St. Chrysostom is justly loud against the remnants of hea thenism in the hired mourners who were sometimes obtruded; while St. Cyprian seems to have been over-earnest in his condemnation of sorrow and all its signs; for though our Lord rebuked the women of Jerusalem who wept for Him, He himself wept at the grave of Lazarus; and the devout men who carried Stephen to his burial, made great lamentation over him. The Puritans, false, with all their professions, to every touch of nature, condemned, as did St. Cyprian, all mourning garments; what would they now say to the ostentatious weepers and flaunting hatbands which so pharisaically distinguish, in the north especially, their modern representatives? On the delicate and often perplexing subject of the degree and temper of mourning for the dead, let these words of Jeremy Taylor suffice: But when our Lord by His own dying 'Solemn and appointed mournings are good had taken away the pollution, as by His expressions of our dearness to the departed rising again He had taken away the sting soul, and of his worth, and our value of him; of death; when life and immortality were and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners, brought to light, and the doctrine of the and in public customs; but the praise of it is Resurrection of the Body had established, not in the Gospel, that is, it hath no direct and once and for ever, all touching the mystery proper uses in religion. For if the dead did of the grave and of the life hereafter which die in the Lord, then there is joy to him; and it is an ill expression of our affection and our man shall be permitted here to know, the doubt and uncertainty which harrassed men's that hath carried our friend to a state of high charity, to weep uncomfortably at a change minds on the relations of life and death, and felicity. Something is to be given to custom, the things thereto pertaining, were ended, something to fame, to nature, and to civilities, and to the single eye of faith the prospect, and to the honor of the deceased friend; for near and distant, was clear and plain. that man is esteemed miserable for whom no That body which He had taken upon Him-friend or relative sheds a tear or pays a solemn self, and declared to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, which was to rise again in more glorious form, could never be relinquished to the beasts of the field; while that anointing which He took for His burial, and that sepulchre which He hanselled, purified the dead body, recognized ceremonies, and consecrated the tomb. The tearing of hair and rending of garments was modified into a sorrow not without hope; and as, under the Promise, the first plot of ground was a sepulchre-so, under its fulfilment, the first sepulchre was in a garden; as if to show that it was no longer the land of the dead, but of the living, and that death was shorn of half its terrors. That men could in any sense rejoice over the grave, was not the least of the miracles of the early Christians; and nothing was more sigh. So far is piety; Leyond, it may be the ostentation and bragging of grief, or a design to serve worse ends. I desire to die a dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral; some flowers sprinkled on my grave would be well and comely-and a soft shower, to turn those flowers into a springing memory or a fair rehearsal, that I may not go forth of my doors as my servants carry the entrails of beasts.-Holy Dying. While the general revelation of immor tality has thus put light in the place of darkness and joy for mourning, the particular Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body in like manner suggests a decency and comeliness in the funeral solemnities. This is no place for theological disquisition, but it should be rememberedwhat is too much forgotten-that the res urrection of the body is no mere abstruse, Some would make scholastic dogma-ncr, what perhaps it is i fusion and inconsistency of opinion exists oftener considered a gross and carnal than on any other which so closely affects representation of an eternal truth—but a our common humanity. Though it is a peculiar revelation of Christianity, involv- favor to which we must all come at last, ing deep doctrinal and great practical les- few agree as to how we should meet it. A sons; for it presupposes our flesh here upon prince will give his body to the dissecters; earth the abode of the Holy Spirit, and, if while many a pauper, who has endured all rightly considered, cannot fail to make us the deprivations of the work house, has laid cultivate purity in a vessel made for eterni- by a pittance to save himself the degradaty. The best human philosophy has either tion of a parish funeral. Mr. Loudon pictured gross earthly substances, or fancied would recommend every gentleman to be thin and spectral images, the shadow of a buried in his own grounds, whose friends shade; but the Christian believes that when probably will only be contented with a this corruptible shall have put on incorrup-vault beneath the altar. tion, he who was made in the beginning af- their grave a flower-bed; and others think #ter the image of God, shall be restored to burial in a cemetery to be semi-heathen. that image, that the soul shall again be Amid such a labyrinth of superstition, irclothed in a more glorious body--the na-reverence, ignorance, and right-feeling, so ture of which he pretends not to scan-and strangely blended, we shall endeavor, uneach man's individuality preserved-that der the guidance of the Church universal, when the sea shall give up her dead, and to thread out a true, simple, and more perdeath and the grave deliver up the dead fect way. which are in them,' each person may speak Enough had been disclosed by the Reof himself the words which Christ Himself ports of the Poor Law Commissioners on spoke after his resurrection, Behold, it is the sanitary condition of the poor, and of I myself.' It was the misapprehension of the Select Committee on the Health of this truth that led the heathen persecutors Towns, as to the loathsome state of the of the Church to burn in contempt the burial-grounds in populous parishes, to bodies of the martyrs, thus vainly imagin- draw some public attention to the subject; ing to extinguish the hope of their resurrec and Sir James Graham promptly followed tion; but, while the Christian's faith led up the matter by instituting a special inhim neither to hasten nor to delay the pro-quiry into the practice of interment in cess of corruption in the return of the body towns, which now appears as a 'Suppleto its kindred dust, he knew that He who made and unmade could again collect its scattered particles, whatever ordeal they might undergo, and was ready to give his body to be burned-though not to burn it. The honorable solemnization of funeral rites followed as a matter of course; a decent interment,' says Hooker, is convenient even for very humanity's sake.' Jeremy Taylor's words will best conclude the argument: 6 Among Christians the honor which is valued in behalf of the dead is, that they be buried in holy ground-that is, in appointed cemete ries, in places of religion, there where the field of God is sown with the seeds of the resurrection, that their bodies also may be among Christians, with whom their hope and their portion is, and shall be forever.' We have made these remarks preliminary to more practical observations, and, we trust, not an inappropriate approach to the subject of Christian Cemeteries. We have wished to lay the foundation deep and aright, and approach reverently, and step by step, to a subject upon which more con mentary Report,' by Mr. Chadwick-a most important, interesting, and comprehensive work, equally marked by laborious research, right feeling, and sound judgment. It will hardly be necessary to harrow up the feelings of our readers by repeating the horrors of Enon-chapel and the Portugalstreet burial-ground.* Our bones, like the grave-digger's in Hamlet, ache to think on't. It may be a newer feature in the controversy to say that there has been a serious doubt among the medical profession whether the putrid exhalations from such masses of corruption have any injurious ef fect on the health of the living. And even such men as Parent-Duchâtelet and Orfila have taken the negative view of the quesBut their argument is at best but tion. negative also; the alleged innocuousness of fying' carrying out,' point to the same custhe anatomical schools to the pupils attend- tom. And the son of the widow of Nain, ing them, their main position, which may who was met by our Lord 'nigh to the gate itself be disputed, being more than answer- of the city,' when he was being carried ed by the positive evidence of the unhealthy out,' may serve to confirm the fact of the state of those residing in the immediate Jewish burial-grounds being without the neighborhood of our worst London grave- walls. yards. Many will be surprised to hear that The earliest Christians conformed to the it was deemed necessary to collect a large same practice; and it is a very credible body of evidence to refute these strange tradition that the proto-martyr St. Stephen opinions of the French school, which seem, was buried where he was stoned, 'out of like other products of the same soil, to the city.' Persecution forced the believers spring from a morbid love of horror for its to a secret celebration of their common own sake. It does, however, appear to be worship; and where would those who held established that the putrefaction of animal a Communion of Saints,' living and dematter is not so injurious to human life, as parted, so likely betake themselves for that of vegetable matter; and that the phy- prayer and praise to the great Head of their sical effects of our present system of intra- Church, as to the tombs of those who nural burial are as nothing compared with had died in defence of the truths that He he injury it inflicts upon morals and reli- taught? Hence the extra-mural catacombs ion. and crypts-the sepulchres of the martyrs. A deep feeling of attachment to the of--became the first Christian churches, a fices and fabric of the Church, is a marked practice to be afterwards abused by making characteristic of the people of England, their churches their sepulchres. For when especially among the poor and the well-edu- persecutions relaxed, and Christian temples cated. The very galleries and pews, and began to rise in the light of day in the other beautifications which so sadly mar midst of the cities, the tomb-altars and relics the true character of our churches, are of the martyrs, if not enclosed by a sanctuary oftener the effects of a well-meaning though on the spot, were removed from their origill-directed zeal, than of the low and puri-inal position and enshrined in the new tanical feeling to which it is now the fash- buildings-the fruitful source of many subion exclusively to refer them. In like man- sequent deflections from the primitive faith ner, a love and reverence for the Lord's-and the origin of the coveted privilege of house-ignorant in its sources, and mis- not being divided in death from those rechievous in its results, we admit-as well mains which the pious when alive had held as mere worldly pride and vanity, have in so much honor, that haply, like the man helped to deface the pillars of our churches cast into the sepulchre of Elisha, they with hideous masses of monumental sculp- might partake of a greater portion of life ture, and to crowd the pavement with the by touching a good man's bones. Howstill more unseemly masses of corruption ever such might have been the popular below. Those who are fond of tracing current of feeling among the more enthusievery abuse in Christian practice to a pagan astic and unlearned, the Church authoritaorigin, will find little to help out their the- tively ever set her face against the innovaory in respect of the practice of interment tion of burial within the churches, or even within the church. The evil is entirely of within the city. Indeed those who died in modern growth, and could only have oc- the greatest odor of sanctity, were not at curred under a faith which, while it recog-first allowed more than approximation to nized the sanctity of places set apart for the outside of the church. The first enholy worship, rejected all notion of pollu- croachment on the building itself, was made tion from the dead. Burial in heathen tem- in favor of Constantine, who yet was not ples was utterly unknown, and scarcely ever deemed worthy to approach nearer than the allowed within the precincts of the city. outer court or porch of the Church of the The well-known heading of 'SISTE VIATOR' Apostles, which he is supposed to have on ancient tombs-justly ridiculed in mcd-founded his son Constantius deeming it, ern inscriptions by Dr. Johnson, and by as St. Chrysostom declares, sufficient honor Sir Thomas Browne before him-signifi- if he might lay his father's bones even in cantly marks the wayside locality of the the Porch of the Fisherman. The first Roman burial-grounds. Many Greek and step, however, was now taken; and thenceLatin words relating to burial, literally signi- forward to this hour there has been a con tinual struggle between the claims of rank, and power, and wealth, and superstition, and self-interest, and covetousness, mingled with feelings of saintly and domestic piety. Between all these potent motives, and the sincere honor of God's house-need we say which has prevailed? Yet there is an unbroken chain of authority against the usage. We question if there is any one other custom that has been so steadily condemned, and so continually persisted in, as that of burial within cities and churches. The two practices scarcely require a separate consideration; for though in some points of view the arguments against churchyard-burial may be urged à fortiori against church-burial; yet the actual state of our civic churchyards has now rendered interment in them the greater evil of the two. Sir Matthew Hale used to say, 'Churches were made for the living, not for the dead;' and directed that his body might be buried Those who have leisure to consult the in the plainest manner, himself dictating laborious records of Bingham, Spondanus, the simplest possible epitaph. The learned Piattoli, Vicq-d'Azyr, and Spelman, and Rivet, quoted by Bingham, speaking of the other writers on sepulture, will be astounded innovation of church-burial, says, 6 This at the mass of ecclesiastical evidences in custom, which covetousness and superstifavor of extra-mural burial. Bingham shows tion first brought in, I wish it were abolthat for the first three centuries suburbanished, with other relics of superstition catacombs or cemeteries were almost exclu- among us; and that the ancient custom sively adopted. Exceptions, proving the was revived, to have public burying-places general rule, in favor of emperors, popes, in the free and open fields without the gates bishops, ecclesiastics, founders, and lay of cities. Grotius, on the same passage of benefactors, continued to increase, with oc- St. Luke on which Latimer has commented, casional reclamations from the Church, up makes the like complaint. In his plan for to the ninth century. From thence to the rebuilding London, Sir Christopher Wren seventeenth we have a series of twenty says, 'I would wish that all burials in councils decreeing the return to the primi-churches might be disallowed,-and if the tive custom-Morem restituendum curent churchyard be close about the Church, this Episcopi in cemeteriis sepeliendi.' Hap-is also inconvenient. It will be inquired, pily this is a question in which all branches where then shall be the burials? I answer, of the Church Catholic do and well may in cemetries, seated in the outskirts of the concur a lengthened detail of all the au- town,' &c. The evidence given by the thorities would far exceed our present present Bishop of London and Mr. Milman limits, but a few citations in chronological is precisely to the same point. order, collected from various sources, of Such a cloud of witnesses seems irresistthe most remarkable expressions of coun-ible. If anything more is wanted, we may cils and individuals, may serve, as far as clench the nail on either head of the law of precedent goes, to set this question at rest the Twelve Tables-'Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito;' and with the following A. D. 331. The Theodosian code forbade all in-recommendation (would it were something terment within the walls of the city, more) of our own Ecclesiastical Commisand even ordered that all the bodies sioners:and monuments already placed there, should be carried out. 529. The first clause ratified by Justinian 563. Council of Brague,— Nullo modo intra ambitum murorum civitatum cujuslibet defuncti corpus sit huma for ever. tum.' 586. Council of Auxere,—“Non licet in baptisterio corpora sepelire.' - 'We will take this opportunity of observing hat the practice of burial in the church or hancel, appears to us to be in many respects injurious; in some instances by weakening or leteriorating the fabric of the church, and in others by its tendency to affect the lives or ealth of the inhabitants. We are of opinion that in future this practice should be discon |
