Ir will be a happy day for posterity when the world definitely makes up ite mind as to the best way of disposing of the dead. Roughly speaking, there are two courses open iv regard to this matter: to keep them, or to get rid of them. If the bodies of those who have died are to be kept, we presume that the only method of doing so properly is to eabalm them, as was done by the ancient Egyptians and the Iucns of Pera, The practice is sanctioned by antiquity, and a glamour of romance is thrown around it by the marvellous fact that at the present day we are actually able to guze upon the form of one of the very Pharaohs who oppressed the Children of Israel—scaroely, however, of the one during whose reign they escaped, seeing that ho is said to have been drowned with all his host in the waters of the Red Sea. The divinity ascribed to the predecessors of Atabuallpa was honoured in Pera by the stra paid to each monarch after death; and the grand Maasoleam, lined with silent figures, ench sented on the throne he bad occupied during life, and adorned with the imperial bona and other insignia of sovereignty, was among the most august of those relics of antiquity destroyed by the ruthless barbarism of Pizarro. Tocomefromaucientto modern instances, Lowever, is an abrupt descent from the sublime tothe ridiculous. Recent attempts to preserve the bodies of the dend have been amusingly satirised by Gustave Droz in his novel Im Femme Génante, the motif of which is the ufatuation which leads a bereaved apothecary to embalm the body of his wife, dress it in the deceased lady's gayest clothes, and surround it by all the little luxuries and fripperies which had been her greatest pleasure daring ife. Whey, however, the sorrowing widower brings a new wife into his desolate home, the sacred relics upstairs become in very truth a troublesome woman,' and the embarrassments which ensue are described with much point and raillery. We may acknowledge, therefore, that embalming is scarcely process suited to the conditions of modern life, and it will be conceded that after all the best and least shocking way is put, if not to bury, our dead out of onrsight. But how?—Certainly the principle of cremation is good, and we hope that in time to come the practice will be universal. At present there are difficulties connected with it which may not yield as promptly as We wish, and meanwhile we think there [should be a reform in the mode of burial. This, as it exists at present, la nothing more than an unsuocessfal, and therefore revolting, attempt to combine the two courses we have spoken of: to put the body ouf of our sight, and at the same time to preserve it. That the r of human being should be placed in the earth is, in itself, a reasonable and cnobjectionable thing. Bat as' it is done now, it is a foolish and pernicious custom, and is fraught with grave pre. judice to the welfare of the living. We should mach like to know what possible good accrues, or is supposed to accrue, from nailing a body up in a shell, a leaden box, and a heavy wooden coffin What solace oan it be to the survivors to know that the remains of their deceased friend are slowly undergoing the most loathsome and horrible process that ingenuity caw devise? Why, if the idea of burial is to return the body to the earth from which it sprang, are such pains taken to keep it away from the earth, with ite purifying, wholesome, Antiseptic influences? To consign a body to the soil enveloped in a three. fold panoply to protect it from that soil, is as though a man, in sore need of a bath, were to plane into a river covered from head to foot in a sack of waterproof. It is regrettable to find prejudice so strong and so unreasoning in this matter. The ghastly pomp of funerals, with their beery mutes and often crashing expense to the survivors, is, we believe, gradually falling out of favour; and as public opinion becomes more sensible in the matter we may look for a corresponding change in the method of burial itself. Lhe great, pri ciple of burial should be to expedite the disintegration of the tissues as much as possible. Lhe body should be en. veloped ina sheet, and laid on a bed of quicklime at the bottom of the grave; another layer of quicklime should be placed apon it, and the grave filled up in the usual way. This, we hold, would be the most rativual, the most practical, and the tenderest method of disposing of the dead; and the sentence earth to earth, ashes to ashes' in the Burial Service would then have some meaning. It is sourcely logionl to say earth to earth' when every possible means have been put in force to keep the oar away from the body, and to prevent it from performing that special function for which it has been intended and pre. pared by nature. Were only the practice we advocate to become law, we should hear no more of pernicious exhalations from over-crowded cemeteries, or the deleterious effects of a graveyard upon people living in its neighbourhood. may be some time before thut most sluggish of all motive-powers—publia opinion—be broughitto declare in favour of the change; but we believe it will come eveutaally, and the world be all the healthier and all the better for having repudiated the old barbarous couserratiou-pruees which it has blinds ly adhered te for go long.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.