digger may be in the ascendant, or the want of room shall require it.

One of these men told me that some of the bodies were comparatively fresh, and that the flesh of others was reduced to a brown and horridly fetid pulp, which left the bones on the slightest touch; but that no serious accident occurred; which can be accounted for by the fact that the putrefactive process attended by the evolution of gas had gone by.

Four coffins, out of upwards of fifty, alone escaped these brutal depredators of the dead,-that which contained the remains of the nobleman, which it was expected would rest ultimately in

according to his last wish, and three others, secured by strong chains passing through their handles at each end; those were padlocked, and the keys kept by the survivors."

I have selected these few instances, believing that each presents an unanswerable argument in favour of some legislative measures, preventive of the interment of the dead in the midst of the living—and in the very midst of our most dense population. The public are indeed much indebted to Mr. Walker for publishing the result of his indefatigable researches on the subject of intra-mural interments. This gentleman as a member of the most liberal profession of medicine, and in full practice, could have had no interested motives in undertaking his task; and it is much to be regretted that his anxiety to draw the attention of the Home Office to this defect in our sanatory policy should have been so coolly received and little appreciated. The work of Mr. Walker ought to be in the hands of all who feel an interest in the well-being of the metropolis.

The gifted American poet, from whose beautiful fragment of " The Burial-place" the introductory lines of this chapter are taken, has presented the English reader with, at once, a graphic description of, and a splendid eulogy upon, the quiet and pretty rural churchyards of England, and places them in effective contrast with our city burial-places.*

Few of our own poets could more happily describe the ever-to-be-cherished customs which have ever led our rural population to endeavour to assuage the terrors of the grave without checking, but on the contrary rather increasing, its moral influence, by those pleasing rites which they are accustomed to perform over the resting-places of the departed.

No Englishman, whose happiness it may have been to travel much through the beautiful

* It ought to be stated to those who have not before seen the "fragment," that the poet's purpose was to institute a contrast between the English country churchyards, and the American burial-places, and where the asterisks occur in the above quotation, the following lines are interposed in the original poem:

The pilgrim bands who pass'd the sea to keep
Their sabbaths in the eye of God alone,

In his wide temple of the wilderness,

Brought not these simple customs of the heart
With them. It might be while they laid their dead
By the vast solemn skirts of the old groves,

And the fresh virgin soil pour'd forth strange flowers
About their graves, and the familiar shades
Of their own native isle, and wonted blooms
And herbs were wanting, which the pious hand
Might plant or scatter there, these gentle rites
Pass'd out of use.

villages of his own country, can fail to have been struck with the general neatness and garden-like attractions of our rural churchyards; and an eminent and delightful writer; a fellow-countryman of Bryant, (to whom, amongst other literary obligations, the English public is indebted for the introduction of his poems into this country,) has in the picturesque "Sketch Book" delighted his readers with happy descriptions of them.

"We adorn our graves," says John Evelyn, "with flowers and redolent plants, just emblems of the life of man, which has been compared, in Holy Scriptures, to those fading beauties, whose roots being buried in dishonour shall rise again in glory."

It would be easy, and not uninteresting or uninstructive, to expatiate upon the beauties of our country churches and churchyards.

There are, perhaps, few places more favourable to meditation, and the study of character, and it might almost be added of local history also, than those interesting spots.

In districts where ancient families have successively resided "calling the very land after their own names," and the population, interwoven by the rites of marriage, have become almost a clan, the village church is an object of no common interest. Under its cold and echoing pavement sleeps the dust of many noble generations; and the thickly escutcheoned walls tell of pedigrees

* Washington Irving.

and alliances, familiar as household words to the dependant tenantry.

The same interesting spots have formed the subject of some of our best pastoral poems; and the Elegy of Gray, the Wilton Church Yard, of Kirk White-and the Minstrel of Beattie, or Blair's Grave-will, probably, hold places in the pleasant recollections of the admirers of English poetry, when loftier names shall be forgotten.

We cannot affect surprise if foreigners in general should, in describing our national customs, severely criticise the unhappy contrast which is exhibited between our village and city burial-places; seeing that this sad defect in our national statistics is so forcibly illustrated by one of our own poets.

Kirke White, in his Wilton Church Yard, has the following lines:

"The poor hind,

Unletter'd as he is, would scorn to invade
The silent resting-place of death. I've seen
The labourer, returning from his toil,

Here stay his steps, and call his children round
And slowly spell the rudely sculptured rhymes,
And, in his rustic manner, moralise.

I've mark'd with what a silent awe he spoke,
And all the honours which he paid the grave,-
And thought of cities, where even cemeteries
Bestrew'd with all the emblems of mortality,
Are not protected from the drunken insolence
Of wassailers profane, and wanton havoc."

We believe that one of the earliest cemeteries established in the metropolis, after the Reformation, separate and distinct in institu

tion and character from the parochial churchyards, was the large burial-ground of Bunhill Fields, in the City Road.

This cemetery was projected during the year of the plague of London, with the view of providing interment for the multitude of bodies which the small and scanty parochial burialgrounds could not receive. It is said in Maitland's history, and Maitland quoted Stowe's work, that it was about that time consecrated by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London. This must, probably, be a mis-statement—as, although the corporation of the City of London has never been wanting either in the outward or real dignities of municipal power, (and no corporation, strictly speaking, or indeed any other large body of men ever exercised the same extent of power with sounder discretion or better results to their fellow-citizens,) we have never heard that the cap of maintenance and the mace were ever exhibited at the ceremony

of cemetery consecration. It does not appear,

however, that the place was then used, but that, some time afterwards, one Tindal became a lessee of the estate, and, under his projection and management, it was converted into a general place of interment for all classes of Dissenters, as well as of Episcopalians.

From the latter end of the seventeenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, this place has

The large plague burial-ground was in the parish of Whitechapel, called the Plague Mount, and afterwards converted into a place of burial for the Society of Friends.