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tinued, so far as the same can be effected with the end of time. The scattered flowers out trenching upon vested rights.

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the earliest of the year,' which are infinitely touching in the old and rustic churchyards of Wales, fail to move us in the suburban cemetery, where we suspect them to have been bought of Harding, marchand des boquets,' and placed so as to be seen of men. The trim grave-gardens cease to please when we read the company's charge for maintaining them, with or without flowers, per annum, 5s.,' or, (for the benefit, we suppose, of young widows) ditto, if in perpetuity, 51.' The whole spirit of the present establishments is necessarily mercenary, and smacks strongly of half-yearly dividends and Copthal Court. The scale of prices varying according to the items of reserved and open ground, extra depth, private grave and public interment, use of screen and chapel, desk service, &c. &c., are of the same character with the dissenting minister, [a wide term,] provided by the company,' and 'monuments, if required, erected' by the same accommodating factotum.

One great and universal recommendation seems to be that a portion of the ground is

We have dwelt at greater length on this part of the subject, because there appears to be a strong prejudice among churchmen against cemeteries altogether, mainly arising, no doubt, from the objectionable constitution and practice of many of those already established, and partly from the notion of their being a modern and unecclesiastical innovation, adopted like our farces and fashions, second-hand from revolutionary Paris. Most people's idea of a cemetery is a something associated with great Egyptian lodges and little shabby flower-beds, jointstock companies and immortelles, dissent, infidelity, and speculation, the irreverences of Abney Park, or the fripperies and frigid-' unconsecrated; and as this is a point upon ities of Père la Chaise. Yet these things which much of the difficulty of forming new are in reality nothing but the passing opin- cemeteries hinges, a short reference to it ions and fashions of the age reflected on an here may not be out of place. Of course institution as old as the faith which conse- all the bigotry falls on the shoulders of the crates it. The misfortune is, that in this Church, and the conscientious scruples to country we have for ages wanted a model of the lot of the Dissenters. And yet it would the primitive usage, otherwise Abney Park seem a feeling more allied to the bigot than would no more be confounded with the ex- the philosopher, to object to be buried in emplar of a Christian cemetery, than our ground because the bishop has pronounced joint-stock proprietary schools are with his blessing over it. It may in the eye of Winchester or Eton, or a stuccoed 'place the non-conformist have gained nothing by of worship,' with the parish church. Yet the ceremonial, but surely it can be none with their many imperfections, even our the worse; we are not yet arrived at the present cemeteries can hardly be consider-point when the ground shall be deemed ed but as a great boon. The earth lies light cursed for the blessing's sake. But there and the sky hangs blue over many a grave is an objection to the burial-service; yet we which would otherwise have been subjected know of no canon that necessarily enforces to the foul compost, and heavy tread, and the reading of it over every corpse consignsulphurous canopy of a London church-ed to consecrated ground; and in the case yard; and a real mourner may, without of a suspected schismatic, most clergymen distraction or disgust, cherish and renew would rather be relieved from the office, his communion with a lost friend, and, like than insist upon it. But suppose it enforcMary, steal to the grave and weep there.ed; then comes in the objection, which we The hopeful manly sorrow of a Christian do not hesitate to designate the most marwill hardly, however, take up with the already conventional modes of modern cemeterial sorrow. Custom, like a bold peasantry,' when' once destroyed, can never be supplied' by mere Chinese imitation; the spirit of it is Pythagorean in its nature, and though it shifts from body to body, it will never re-animate its once deserted shell, till

vellous cant that ever stood the test of half a century. The objection is to the expres sion of a sure and certain hope'—it is nothing more—' of the resurrection to eternal life,' which the priest ministerially pronounces for the Church over all who die in her communion. Now, in this hope the friends and relations of a person, how

ever wretched in his life or death, would [nother world: the blame must rest with scarcely be supposed to refuse to in-those who raise the offence and cause the dulge the scruple must clearly be all on schism. The Church has never denied her the other side; it may, indeed, be a matterburying-ground even to those who have reof serious doubt and trembling with the fused to maintain it; and many a one, it clergyman, how far he may be justified in may be feared, has entered her walls the thus pronouncing over one whom (we omit first time as a corpse. What country cuthe more difficult cases) he may know not rate has not felt his charity warmed, and the at all, or know only for evil. And this, in- asperities of his religious zeal softened, to deed, was the origin of the objection. It view in his parish churchyard the graves of was urged in the first instance by the Puri- the Churchman, the Romanist, and the Distan clergy as a personal grievance, and then senter, side by side, and returned to the in blind perversion, taken up by the whole work of his calling with more hopeful feeldissenting body. Thus a conscientiousings for those who separate themselves, scruple which an over-charitable clergy may and more solemn considerations of the aphave been too remiss in urging in their own pointed season of the one fold and the defence, has been adroitly laid hold of by one Shepherd? But the arrangement of their opponents and turned into a weapon our present cemeteries excludes these softof attack against them. The final and only ening influences, and the dissenter has barpresentable grievance is, that in consecrat-red himself out a portion, lest he should be ed ground they are not allowed to introduce thought to identify himself in death with the whatever manner of service or ceremony church he has through life opposed. Since their own unrestricted fancies may devise- the Churchman cannot be buried in uncona regulation which, comely and expedient secrated ground, and the Dissenter will not at all times, has now been rendered abso-in ground that has been blest, surely charity lutely necessary by the mummeries attempt- would suggest the entire separation of their ed of late years by bodies unconnected with cemeteries as less likely to perpetuate painthe four denominations,'-Oddfellows and ful and bitter feelings, than the present neIndependent Brethren, of the more inno- cessarily antagonistic expression of juxtapocent kind-Chartists, Socialists, and the sition. When the conventicle is built withlike, of the more pernicious. in a stone's-throw of the cathedral, the windows of either are more likely to be broken.

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It is a curious fact, but surprising only to those who have never studied the shifting system of the non-conformists, that the original objection was not to the denial of a service of their own, but to any service at all, whereby, as they alleged, prayer for the dead was maintained. The funeral sermon, now so rigidly exacted by them of their preachers on the death of every paying sitter, was another of their original abominations. It may serve the purpose of a party to decry the burial service of the Church, as lately that for the solemnization of marriage;* but the love for the Church's last office, in preference to the long extemporaneous effusions with which the dissenters bruise the broken reed of sorrow, still keeps a firm hold even among the dissenters of the rural population.

It is sad to think that our differences and distractions cannot end with this life, but must be carried into the confines of

The marriage service was a while ago the stalking grievance. The law was altered to meet the scruple. The last Registration Report shows that out of 122,496 marriages in 1841, 5882 couples only availed themselves of the new 'registered places of worship.'

It is this among other reasons that leads us to urge strongly upon the Church to take up the subject of Cemeteries for itself. The joint-stock establishments at present existing, objectionable on many grounds, are wholly unavailable to the mass of the population, by reason of their expense. They are nothing more than the exclusive luxury of the indulgent few. Two guineas would scarcely cover the very lowest charges at the cemetery, for what the poor man in the country gets for nothing; and two additional guineas are exacted for the commonest headstone. The rich and vain are sconced in like proportion; but against the very poor the cemetery door is inexorably closed. How inconvenient that Death makes all equal landholders, and that the pauper requires as many inches of ground as the owner of ten thousand acres ! this has been a sore puzzle to parish vestries; and though ten or fifteen (Sup. Rep.) may be buried in the same grave, these cemetery companies have not yet offered One company has sufficiently cheap terms. actually put forth a calculation that seven acres, at the rate of ten coffins in each grave,

such an extent as to be filled with graves in fourteen years. At the end of seven years cultivated, planted, or laid down in grass, in more it may revert to the landlord, and be any manner that may be thought proper.'" And again

would accommodate 1,335,000 paupers | field rented on a twenty-one years' lease, of This agreeable scene for the contemplation of a Christian nation, a member of the House of Commons would turn into a dissolving view of the shortest possible duration, by the prompt application of quicklime; the following question, with slight variety of expression, having been again and again repeated in committee:- Do you think that there would be any objection to burying bodies with a certain quantity of quicklime sufficient to destroy the coffin and the whole thing in a given time?' How unconsciously does the irreverent euphemism which we have italicised, unveil the revolting nature of the question!

Finding Mr. Loudon* justly indignant at this cheap burial cry, what shall we say when he himself proposes to convert paupers into manure! Yet such is actually his plan of employing the surplus corpses of London to fertilize the poor soils in its vicinity. These are his very words:

'Nor does there appear to us any objection to union workhouses having a portion of their garden-ground used as a cemetery, to be restored to cultivation after a sufficient time had elapsed.'—Cemet., p. 50.

The atrocities of the common pits at Naples and Leghorn, into which the corpses of the poor are indiscriminately tumbled, are to our mind less revolting than these nice calculations of getting rid of the greatest number of troublesome bodies at the least possible expense, and to the greatest possible advantage. They do these things no better in France. The goodiy show that strikes the eye of the hurrying visitor at Père la Chaise is but the screen of whited sepulchres that hides the foulness and corruption of the background. There, as in Poland, the bodies of the poor are trenched. in, one upon another, in the most revolting disorder!'

"This temporary cemetery may be merely a * We had mended a hard pen to deal with Mr. Loudon's book on Cemeteries, his least, and, we add with regret, his last work. While we write, his subject has become to him a stern reality; and the grave, which he so lately discussed, has clos- 'Hoc misere plebi stabat commune sepulchrum ed over him This must needs take the edge off any censure we were prepared to pronounce on Nothing will secure to the poor of our him. His most laborious works have been repeat-great cities the decent sepulture which is edly and favorably noticed in these pages-while their right by nature and the Gospel, but we deem it our duty to protest against the insin- transferring the management of cemeteries uation of certain pernicious opinions which were too clearly traceable in his earlier writings. We doubt not that the severe sufferings of mind and body- and the latter were grievous indeed-with which he was latterly chastened, left him a wiser and a happier man; for his last work, which afford ed greater scope for its introduction, is found to contain less objectionable matter. Still it was impossible for a mere utilitarian mind rightly to embrace a subject which hangs so closely on the confines of another world. His book, therefore, though useful in many of its suggestions, falls al together short as a guide to what a Christian cemetery ought to be. We would, however, now rather call attention to his more useful labors as an horticultural writer. After all his unequalled toils, with such over-zealous earnestness did he devote himself to his great work, the Arboretum Britannicum,' that at his death he had no

thing to leave his widow and child but the copyright of this and other works. On this one book alone he is said to have expended 10,000l. A meeting of his friends has been held to endeavor to dispose of the remaining copies of his works in the hands of his widow; and we cheerfully recommend the plan proposed to all who do not already possess his works, and who may thus combine their own advantage with an act of real charity. Dr. Lindley has warmly advocated Mrs. Loudon's cause in the Gardener's Chronicle,' to which very useful paper we must refer our readers for the details of the proposal.

from private persons and dividend-paying companies, into the hands of a public body uninterested in regarding them as a source of profit. Mr. Chadwick's arguments are to us conclusive against the plan of separate parochial burial-grounds as recommended by Mr. Mackinnon's bill of last session, and other similar schemes. All the present evils, moral, physical, and economical, would, we are convinced, by a parochial agency, be ultimately increased; but, on the other hand, we see great objections to Mr. Chadwick's own proposition of placing them under the direction of the Commis sioners of Woods and Forests. We should be loth to see our burial-grounds severed from the Church, and intrusted to purely secular officers. It would be the abandonment of a great and honored principle, and a great practical discouragement to church membership. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners are the body to which people will naturally look when the absolute necessity of providing additional burial-grounds has become, as it soon will, universally acknowledged. Any attempt on the part of Gov

ernment to devote public money to an ob- Church, and a district assigned the officiaject trenching upon religion, will be metting clergyman for spiritual cure. with the same difficulties and outcry that Then we might see a Cemetery worthy assailed them on the question of factory ed-of the Church of England. The painful ucation. They would have to sacrifice ei-associations of exclusiveness, and disunion, ther the Church or their plan. The Dis-and traffic, which are connected with the senters strenuously opposed even the latitu-present establishments, would be removed. dinarian provisions of Mr. Mackinnon's Rich and poor might lie side by side, and a bill; and we feel convinced that the most due snpervision of emblems and epitaphs liberal adoption of Mr. Chadwick's plan exclude the offensive sculptures and inscripwould meet with a yet more virulent oppo- tions which now meet the eye. sition from the same quarter. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners will be enabled to

Mr. Milman has made a suggestion which we think most excellent; that the funeral take a far more unfettered course. Their procession should not be formed at the funds may be devoted to the formation of house of the deceased, but at the gates of cemeteries on strictly ecclesiastical princi- the cemetery. To any one who has underples, without hurting the interest or con- gone the pain of accompanying a funeral science of any one, but greatly facilitating through the heedless and irreverent crowds the present right which every parishioner of the metropolis, the relief of this procehas to burial in his own churchyard. If it dure is at once apparent, while to the poor, be urged that there are higher and more on the score of expense alone, it would be pressing claims upon their revenues-that almost indispensable. It would relieve the the living must not be neglected for the immediate thoroughfares to the cemetery sake of the dead-we answer, that the from the unceasing passage of the signs of adoption of cemeteries may, with proper death, and add greatly to the solemnity and care, be made a source of increase rather impressiveness of the scene, by concentrathan of diminution in their income. The ting, as it were, those wholesome considerhigh profits* realized by the existing com- ations appropriate to the occasion, which panies clearly show, that even with very are now too often frittered away by the great reductions in the fees of the rich, and trite and pointless conversation of the gratuitous interment to the poor, a consid- mourning coach. The coffin might be reerable surplus would remain above the or-moved early on the day of burial-in the dinary interest on the original outlay.case of the poor it would be a great boon They have every encouragement to ask for to remove it much sooner-to a chamber of increased powers from Parliament, from the lodge of the cemetery, in the vestibule the fruits, already ripening, of the legisla-of which the friends of the deceased might tion of last session. A sum might in the meet at the appointed hour to robe.-The first instance be raised on the security of advantages of this arrangement would be the Commissioners, to be repaid by instal-immense. In the funerals of the more ments. Nor can there be any doubt that if rich, the whole cavalcade of mourningthe Church were to take the matter in coaches would be swept away; each mournhand, with the especial object of giving a er would reach the cemetery in the way less costly and more decent interment to the most convenient to himself-would use his poor-having respect to vested parochial own carriage, if he had one, instead of acand clerical rights, and devoting any sur- quiescing in the unmitigated absurdity of plus that might accrue to ecclesiastical pur-letting it follow,' while he puts the friends poses-many Churchmen would be found of the deceased to the cost of providing the to come forward either freely to give or fair-one in which he rides. We should be ly to sell ground for a district cemetery, as spared, too, the folly of hiring four horses to they now offer it for a district church. draw, at a snail's pace, the corpse of him One expense would be avoided in the aban-who perhaps when alive never sat, at full donment of the double chapel arrangement; trot, behind more than one; and be relievand we do not see why the suburbs mighted at the same time from the opposite specnot be benefited by making the Cemetery Chapels available for the full services of the

In one cemetery the actual sale of graves is at the rate of 17,000l. per acre. A calculation made for another gives 45,375l. per acre, without the fees for monuments, &c.

tacle, lately introduced, in the shape of a Cruelty-van, with a long boot under the driver for the coffin, and a posse of mourners crammed into the Clarence behind, all drawn along by one poor horse at a very respectable trot.

The chapel of the cemetery should be near the entrance, and thither each band of mourners might follow the corpse of their own friend, and after hearing the psalm and lesson read, proceed to the grave-side service, which- -as the burial would be indiscriminate, and no reserved ground for the rich, or neglected corner for the poor -might either be read once over the adjoining graves, or, we would much prefer, separately over each. Norman architecture, from its massive and solemn character, would seem the most appropriate style, especially for the construction of crypts; and a cloister connected with the church, should run round the whole inclosure, which would serve for the erection of memorial tablets, and as a covered passage for mourn ers to the more distant parts of the cemetery. A portion of this would only be necessary in the first instance, to be afterwards extended as the ground was occupied.

admission of every new-fangled and patented contrivance into the sepulchral pale. King Death's is a very ancient monarchy, and quite of the old regime. The lowering therefore of the coffin from the chapel into the crypt by means of Bramah's hydraulic press, so highly extolled for its solemnity in some of the cemeteries, has too much of the trick of the theatre about it for the stern realities of the grave. Nor is there any thing much better in Mr. Loudon's castiron tallies for gravestones, temporary railroad cemeteries, and co-operative railroad hearses.' We think that some of the metropolitan clergy have spoken rather unadvisedly in advocating music as enhancing the attractiveness of a national service of the dead;'-and we hardly suppose that Dr. Russell, when pleasantly recurring to his boyhood recollections of the ambitious choir' of his native village attempting 'Vital spark of heavenly flame,' seriously meant to recommend the general revival of such aspiring flights.

Psalms and Hymns at funerals, which have neither propriety nor rubric to recommend them, are now very rightly falling into disuse, even in rural districts, from the melancholy experience of their unsolemn effect.

Liverpool and Glasgow are fortunate in the site of their burial-grounds, but the German cemeteries are those which seem to offer most suggestions for the improvement of our own. The Court of Peace,' or God's Acre,' to give the German names literally translated, is generally well worthy a visit. A recent traveller says

A bold and simple Cross should rise on the most elevated point of ground; and instead of Mr. Barber Beaumont's and Abney Park Cemetery, or the like, they might be called after the apostle or the evangelist in whose name they were consecrated. And this consecration, it should be remembered, is not only a religious rite, but a security of its perpetual reservation and maintenance as a place of interment. The most respectable of our present cemeteries are established under an act of Parliament, and the whole of the ground, blest and unblest, is, we suppose, perfectly safe from future violation. But there are many others, and Abney Park is one, the ephemeral property either of one or several private persons. These, according as the market varies, 'It is a place of public resort at all hoursmay be burial-grounds to-day, and Prospect- its gates stand always open. It is planted with a few trees, so that its aspect may not be altoplaces or Railroad-stations to-morrow. In fact, when they are quite full, they must al-ed with crosses, gravestones, and monugether cheerless; but it is more thickly plantmost of necessity be turned to some other ments congregated together, thick as a forest, use. At Abney Park, we were told on inqui- slowly advancing foot by foot, year after year, ry, that though not an inch of ground is to occupy all the vacant space. Gravestones consecrated, an Episcopal clergyman Episcopal clergyman' of various shapes, with lengthy epitaphs, are reads the burial-service of the Church of common among us; here, however, the more England. We should like to know the ued recollection are every where observed in touching and trustworthy symptoms of continbishop that this reverend Episcopalian ac- the fresh chaplet or nosegay, the little border knowledges. In one of those called Dis- of flowers newly dug, the basin of holy water, senters' burial-grounds, the numbers inter- all placed by the side of the funeral hillock.' red are at the rate of more than 2,300 per acre per annum! In another an uneducated a man generally acts as minister, puts on a surplice, and reads the church-service, or any other service that may be called for.' -Sup. Rep. $156.

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We should be very scrupulous as to the

All this is perfectly natural and national in the people to whom it belongs, and is very striking and instructive to the English traveller; but the attempt to transplant the sentiment here, presents, in the hands of a Glasgow author, the following serio-comic

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