A Report on the Practice of Interment in Towns

Extent of Burial Grounds Existing in the Metropolis

§ 154. The rule, as deduced (§ 142.) from the German practice, would give an average of 110 burials per acre per annum in a town district.

§ 155. In 1834, some returns of the extent of burial grounds and the number of burials during the three years preceding, in the places of burial within the diocese of the Bishop of London and the bills of mortality, were laid before the House of Commons. From those it appeared that the ground occupied as burial ground within the diocese amounted to 103 acres, and that the average number of burials was 22,548, or 219 per acre, being from 108 to 117 more per acre than the preceding rule would give. In some grounds the number of interments were as high as 891 per acre. But that return did not include the burials in the whole of the metropolis. From the results of a systematic inquiry which has been recently made throughout the whole district of the metropolis (as defined in the report of the Registrar-General) into the extent of the burial-grounds and the average weekly number of burials at each place, it appears that the total area now occupied as burial ground, including the new cemeteries, and the annual rate of burial in each class, is, as nearly as can be ascertained, as follows:—

Burial Grounds in the Metropolis.	Area in Acres.	Annual Number of Burials, exclusive of Vault Burials.	Average Annual Number of Burials per Acre.	Highest Number of Burials per Acre in any Ground.	Lowest Number of Burials per Acre in any Ground.
Parochial Grounds	1763 10	33,747	191	3,073	11
Protestant Dissenters’ Grounds	87 10	1,715	197	1,210	6
Roman Catholics	03 10	270	1,043	1,613	814
Jews	92 10	304	33	52	13
Swedish Chapel	01 10	10	108
Undescribed	109 10	3,197	294	1,109	5
Private Grounds	126 10	5,112	405	2,323	50
Total of Intra-mural Grounds	2181 10	44,355	203	1,080	46
Total of New Cemeteries	2605 10	3,336	13	155	4
Vault Burials		789

The total numbers of burials, as ascertained by verbal inquiry at each graveyard, approximate so nearly to the total numbers of deaths as to afford a presumption in favour of the general accuracy of these returns.30

§ 156. The most crowded burial grounds, on the average, are, it appears, the grounds which belong to private individuals, usually undertakers. In these places an uneducated man generally acts as minister, puts on a surplice, and reads the church service, or any other service that may be called for. These grounds are morally offensive, and appear to be physically dangerous in proportion to the numbers interred in them. In one of them the numbers interred appears to be at the rate of more than 2,300 per acre per annum. Names are given to these places by the owners, importing connexion with congregations, but without any apparent authority for doing so. They are repudiated by the most respectable Dissenters. On this point it appears to be just to submit an extract from a communication (on his individual responsibility) from the Rev. John Blackburn, Pentonville, one of the secretaries of the Union of Congregational Dissenters:—

I have no facts to communicate relating to the physical effects produced by the present crowded state of the old grave-yards, but I am sure the moral sensibilities of many delicate minds must sicken to witness the heaped soil, saturated and blackened with human remains and fragments of the dead, exposed to the rude insults of ignorant and brutal spectators. Immediately connected with this, allow me to mention that some spots that have been chosen both by episcopalians and dissenters, are wet and clayey, so that the splash of water is heard from the graves, as the coffins descend, producing a shudder in every mourner. I may with confidence disclaim the imputation that the grave-yards of dissenters were primarily and chiefly established with a view to emolument. Many grave-yards that are private property, purchased by undertakers for their own emolument, are regarded as dissenting burial grounds, and we are implicated in the censures that are pronounced upon the unseemly and disgusting transactions that have been detected in them.—These are not dissenting but general cemeteries: dissenters use them for the reasons already stated [which are omitted, being the objections urged by dissenters against the indiscriminate use of the burial service.] The pastor of the bereaved family accompanies them to the grave, or meets them there, adapts his ministrations to their known circumstances, and without fee or reward—except in rare cases—discharges them as part of his pastoral work. By far the greatest portion of the persons buried in these grounds are not dissenters at all; and to meet the feelings of their connections the proprietors of these grounds obtain the services of men, who, without scruple, ape the clergyman, assume the surplice, and read the service of the church; a fact which is sufficient to show that they are not dissenters themselves, nor seeking to conciliate dissenting objections. The congregational or independent denomination, to which I belong, have about 120 chapels in and around London, and I believe there is not more than a sixth part of them that have grave yards attached, and all those are not in the hands of trustees appointed by the people. But, as far as I know and believe, there are but very few of these open to the sweeping censures that have been pronounced upon them. At a recent meeting of the congregational ministers of the metropolis they resolved, “That this board will always hail with satisfaction the adoption of any efficient means to correct abuses connected with burial grounds, as well general as parochial, where such abuses are proved to exist;” and I trust that the character of dissenters in general for good citizenship, is sufficient to assure you that they will never permit their private interests to oppose any great measures for our social improvement that are really national in their spirit and design.

As the sufficiency of the burial grounds existing within the metropolis does not properly come into question under the general conclusion that there ought to be none there, the only observation I at present submit upon the space of ground now occupied is that it would serve hereafter advantageously to be kept open as public ground.

§ 157. The well considered regulations then, give about 1452 common graves per acre for a town population. § 145. In the arrangements made for cemeteries belonging to a joint stock company, it is calculated that every acre of ground filled with vaults and private graves, will receive no less than 11,000 bodies. On the average size of coffins of 6 feet 3 by 1 foot 9, the common estimate is that the floor of an acre will receive 3,887 coffins laid side by side.

§ 158. Another calculation for the produce of a company’s cemetery, is that each grave will be 6 feet by 2 feet, or 12 square feet, or 3630 graves to the acre (which contains 43,560 square feet), and that every grave shall contain 10 coffins in each grave. Twenty-five shillings is charged for each coffin interred: hence each acre is calculated to produce, when filled (without reference to the public health), a gross sum of 45,375l. In one instance, where the burials in a company’s cemetery were five deep, the sales of graves actually made were at a rate of 17,000l. per acre, gross produce.

§ 159. The retention of bodies in leaden coffins in vaults is objected to, as increasing the noxiousness of the gases, which sooner or later escape, and when in vaults beneath churches, create a miasma which is apt to escape through the floor, whenever the church is warmed.31 In Austria, and in other states, interment in lead is prohibited. In the majority of cases in England, burial in lead, as well as in other expensive coffins, appears to be generally promoted by the undertakers, to whom they are the most profitable. The Emperor Joseph, of Austria, on the knowledge of the more deleterious character of concentrated emanations from the dead, forbade the use even of coffins, and directed that all people should be buried in sacks; but this excited discontent amongst his subjects, who agreed in the sanitary principle of the measure, but complained that, putting them in sacks, was treating them as the Turks would do, and the regulation was altered for burial in coffins made of pine, which decays rapidly.

§ 160. It is to be observed as an improved direction of the public mind in the British metropolis, that on the part of persons who have the means of defraying the expenses of vaults, an increasing preference of inhumation is manifested, and that it is found by cemetery companies that catacombs prepared for sale are not so much in demand as was anticipated from the proportion in which they were in demand in the parochial burial grounds. The state of some of the places of common burial has evidently been such as to lead to the practice of entombment in preference to inhumation. The associations commonly expressed with inhumation (redditur enim terræ corpus, et ita locatum ac situm, quasi operimento matris obducitur, Cic. de legibus) were with a purer earth. In the most carefully regulated cemeteries in Germany the sale of any portions in perpetuity is entirely prohibited. The recent investigation of the disorders which have arisen in the management of the Parisian cemeteries, has led to a conclusion for the adoption of the same regulation, it having been found that, in time, families become extinct, or fall into decay; that a proportion of the tombs and vaults are neglected and fall into ruins, and detract from the general good keeping of the rest. Under such circumstances the private tombs too frequently raise associations of a character the very opposite of those intended by the purchasers. Their numbers at the same time increase and continually encroach on the spaces for general burial, and would ultimately occupy the whole of the cemeteries; and in the progress of population would absorb and hold large tracts of most important land near towns, in what would literally be one of the worst species of mortmain.32 It has, therefore, been found necessary to restrict the sale of perpetuities in vaults or graves, and to give only what may be called leases for years, renewable on conditions, for the public protection.

§ 161. In the common grave-yards in the metropolis, the bones are scattered about, or wheeled away to a bone-house, where they are thrown into a heap. The feeling of the labouring classes at the sight of the removal of the bones from an overcrowded churchyard was expressed in a recent complaint, that those in charge of the place “would not give the poor bones time to decay.” In Paris it is the custom to arrange skulls and bones, in various forms, in catacombs: but they are offensive objects; and the feelings of the poor man must be but ill consulted in presenting to him, in these decayed and debased remains, the prospect of the use of his own skull and bones to form part of a great and revolting monument. A more beneficial arrangement is that in the better regulated German cemeteries, where it is the invariable rule to remove from the sight and to re-inter carefully, all bones, the object being to preserve the associations of a gradual, inoffensive, and salutary restoration of the material elements.

§ 162. By the Code Napoleon any one was permitted to be interred in his own garden, or wheresoever he pleased. By the better considered jurisprudence in Germany this liberty is withheld: because if the practice were to become general, such decomposing remains would be spread about without order, to the injury of the public health: it would facilitate the burial of persons murdered; many by precipitate and ill-regulated burial would be buried alive; many would be buried in this mode to evade proper inquiries. An examination of the circumstances of private and speculative burial grounds in this country developes many facts, in corroboration of the soundness of the German jurisprudence on this subject.

§ 163. The information with relation to material arrangements of the public cemeteries in Germany is submitted, as showing how much there is in their details of important questions of scientific appliances for consideration, which, in the new cemeteries as well as in the old burial grounds in this country, have generally been overlooked: appliances which, even if they were practicable on a parochial scale of management, would surely be little understood by the ordinary class of parochial officers. Though the practice in Germany appears to be on most points in advance, the inquiry has elicited various suggestions of probable important improvements upon it, which it is thought unnecessary to discuss, as being more fitted for investigation when new cemeteries have been determined upon than at present. It may for the present suffice to state, that a confident expectation is entertained by the best informed witnesses, that were the attention of the most competent persons who have hitherto been scared away, secured to the subject, still further useful improvements would be in a very short time effected.

§ 164. The following portion of evidence from Dr. Lyon Playfair, which adverts to the management of the evil in the common grave-yards, may however be adduced as an example of the character of some of the improvements already suggested.

You have examined into the state of certain church-yards with reference to their sanitary effects; have you not?—I have examined various church-yards and burying-grounds for the purpose of ascertaining whether the layer of earth above the bodies is sufficient to absorb the putrid gases evolved. The carbonic acid gas would not in any case be absorbed, but it is not to this that the evil effects are to be attributed. The slightest inspection, however, shows that the putrid gases are not thoroughly absorbed by soil lying over the bodies. I know several church-yards from which most fœtid smells are evolved, and gases with similar odour are emitted from the sides of sewers passing in the vicinity of church-yards, although they may be above 30 feet from them. If these gases are thus evolved laterally they must be equally emitted in an upward direction. The worst burying-grounds which have come under my notice are those belonging to private persons, generally undertakers, who make their livelihood by interring at a cheap rate. I visited one of these only a few days since. It was about 150 feet long and about 30 broad, and had been used for 80 years as a burying ground, and was still a favourite place of interment among the poor. Of course many bodies are placed in one grave, and when the ground becomes too much raised by bodies, it is levelled, and the boxes, &c., exhumed during the levelling, are thrown into a large cellar fitted to receive them. This whole ground was a mass of corruption, as may well be supposed, and it is situated in a densely populated neighbourhood. I mention this case as one among many other similar cases of private burying-grounds, in order to suggest that attention should be paid in any alteration respecting the laws regulating interments, to prevent burying-grounds being kept as objects of pecuniary speculation, at least within towns; for this practice gives much inducement to violate every feeling of decency and regard for public health in the desire for gain.

Can you suggest any method for preventing the escape of miasmata from graves, or from places for the interment of the dead?—I cannot suggest any methods as the results of experiment; but, at the same time, I think it possible that the evil might be much abated by the use of certain materials. For example, in a theoretical point of view, chloride of lime would be quite effectual, but it might not be applicable in practice, both from its expense, and from its great tendency to be decomposed. A cheap method of absorbing putrid effluvia, is by a mixture of charcoal from burnt tar, burnt clay, and gypsum. When such a mixture is mixed with putrid matter, all smell is immediately removed, and the matter is rendered inoffensive to health. When this mixture is strewed over decomposing animal and vegetable matter, it ceases to emit disagreeable odours. In like manner, if a layer of such a cheap mixture as this were thrown around and over a coffin, it would absorb probably the greatest part, if not all, of the putrid miasmata arising from the decomposition of the body. It possesses also this advantage, that it would not impair by keeping, even though the coffin did not burst for some years. I beg, however, again to state, that I throw this out as a mere suggestion, as I have never tried it in the case of graves, although I think it would be well worthy of a trial. Vegetation also ought to be encouraged over the graves. The legitimate food of plants is derived from decaying animal matter; for indeed all the food existing in the air, from which they derive their nutriment, is furnished to the atmosphere by the decay of organic matter. Plants assist in absorbing the emanations which escape from graves.

§ 165. It has been mentioned as an objection entertained in Germany to the use of clayey soils, on the ground that they retain the gases, and prevent that regular access of air which is necessary (as explained in a portion of evidence already adduced) to allow decay to proceed without putrefaction, which is the most dangerous condition. Good sand and good gravel are of value in the metropolis. It is stated by a gentleman connected with one of the cemeteries, and it is here mentioned to show the prevalent want of knowledge, that it is the common practice when sand and gravel are dug out to form a grave, not to return it, but to fill in with the cheap and coarse, but retentive, London clay. Now the grave-diggers frequently suffer severely in re-opening the graves which are thus filled in by the retentive clay, and require to be stimulated to their work by ardent spirits; and their ghastly appearance, as Mr. Loudon observes, attests the sufferings which they undergo. In another new cemetery, where the grass was very poor, the turf-mounds covering some of the graves was trodden down; on inquiring the reason, it was stated that sheep had been let in to eat the grass, to save the expense of cutting it. Some of the trees and shrubs first planted had not thriven well, and the officers stated that they had not yet been able to persuade the directors to go to the expense of renewing them. In most other cemeteries the plantations were in very good order, and several presented points of improvement, in the architectural arrangements. But, as observed by Mr. Loudon, “nearly all the new London cemeteries, and most of the provincial cemeteries, adopt the practice of interring a number of bodies in the same grave, without leaving a sufficient depth over each coffin, to absorb the greater part of the gases of decomposition.” It may indeed be confidently affirmed that there is scarcely one of the new cemeteries in which one or other of the well established principles of management, in the choice of the site, or the preparation of the soil, or in the drainage, or in the mode of burial, or in the numbers interred in one grave, or in respect to the precautions to prevent the undue corruption of the remains and escapes of dangerous morbific matter, or in the service and officers, or in jurisprudential securities, is not overlooked. (§ 20.)

§ 166. In the cemetery at Liverpool, where Mr. Huskisson is interred, it is the practice to pile the coffins of the poorest class in deep graves or pits, one coffin over the other, with only a thin covering of earth over each coffin until the pit is filled, when it holds upwards of thirty, as the sexton expressed it, about “thirty-four big and little.” The observation of several of the joint stock cemeteries, and their estimates of future amounts of interments, not of one body in one grave, but of bodies piled one over the other by five and even ten deep, without any new precautions in respect to the emanations, the general experience of the difficulty of effecting any change through commercial associations that does not promise an immediate return for the expense incurred, prove that, although they may be kept in a better condition to the eye, there is no security that they will not be as injurious as any common burial grounds, and stand as much in need of some regulations for the protection of the inhabitants of the dwellings which in time may be driven closer around them.

§ 167. Besides the improvements in formation of the cemeteries and management of the interments, the regulations of the Franckfort and Munich cemeteries present instances which it may here be proper to submit for consideration, of the advantages derivable in aid of the religious service from a better organized staff of officers in maintaining superior order in the grounds on all occasions of solemnity.

§ 168. It will have been perceived how little support the clergymen have in any appointed staff of officers to maintain order in the burial-grounds of the more populous parishes. §§ 87, 88, and 111. On occasions of several interments taking place in burial-grounds in the metropolis at the same time, the master undertakers will volunteer their services to get the crowd of by-standers into some order, and show how much might be done by other and better superintendence to add to the impressiveness of the last scene. The inferior attendants, the grave-diggers, at the interments which I have witnessed at the new cemeteries, attended, as they usually do at the parochial grounds, in a disorderly condition—unshaven, dirty in person, in dirty shirts and in the old and the common filthy dress. During the burial service the undertakers’ men only concerned themselves in removing the feathers from the hearse and preparing for an immediate return; all the attendants began talking on other matters, and went their different ways immediately the coffin was lowered; the mourners were left with the utmost unconcern, except by the grave-diggers, who followed them in the attitude of the usual solicitations of money for drink.

§ 169. A conception of the alterations required and practicable in public establishments for conducting such a ceremony with due regard to the feelings of the survivors and the public, may be formed by inspecting the regulations of the cemetery at Franckfort, from which it will be perceived that the superintendence of the cemetery, and of the sextons in their various employments, is given to a cemetery inspector, whose duties are described in the second section of the regulations, and who must be a person of medical education, an officer of public health, examined by the Sanitary Board, and found by them to be qualified. It is specified as an important duty that he shall be present at the interment, “in order that by his presence nothing may be done by his subordinates, or by any other person, which should be contrary to the dignity of the interment or to the regulations.”

The regulations also provide as follows:—

(3.) For the performance of all the necessary arrangements preceding the interment, commissaries of interments are appointed to take the place of the so called undertakers. These commissaries have to arrange every thing connected with the funeral, and are responsible for the proper fulfilment of all the regulations given in their instructions.

(4.) In order to prevent the great expense which was formerly occasioned by the attendance with the dead to the grave, bearers shall be appointed who shall attend to the cemetery all funerals, without distinction of rank or condition.

To these bearers shall be given assistants, who shall be equally under the control of the interment commissaries.

The commissary must see that the bearers are always cleanly and respectably dressed in black when they appear at a funeral, and must be particularly careful that they conduct themselves seriously, quietly, and respectably.

He must also see that the carriage of the dead is not driven quickly either in the town or beyond it, but that it is conducted respectably at a proper quiet pace.

When the dead is covered, and not until then, the commissary and the bearers shall leave the cemetery in perfect silence.

For any impropriety which may, through the conduct of the bearers, arise during the interment, the commissary is responsible.

(35.) The sextons must always be respectably dressed in black during the interment, and those who go to the house of mourning must always appear in neat and clean attire, and must be studious at all times, whether engaged within or without the churchyard, to preserve a modest and proper behaviour. Drunkenness, neglect of duty, or abuse of their services, will be punished by the Church Yard Commission, and on repetition of the offence, the offender will be dismissed.

A Christian attention and civility to all is required from the highest public officer, without any fees or expense, and mendicancy on the part of the inferior attendants, and the rapacity of the uneducated and of the ill-educated, which always rushes in most strongly on the helpless, are equally prohibited. Of the inspector himself, it is by these regulations provided:—

(17.) It is the duty of the inspector to treat all who have to apply to him with politeness and respect, and to give the required information unweariedly and with ready good will.

Under no pretext is he allowed either to demand or receive any payment, as he has a sufficient salary.

And in respect to the other officers:—

(40.) Besides, or in addition to the authorised payment printed in the tax roll, and determined by the Cemetery Commission as the sufficient remuneration of the Inspector, Commissioners of Interments, the bearers and sextons, no one is on the occasion of a death, either to give money, or to furnish food and drink.

The practice of furnishing crape, gloves, lemons, &c., by the friends of the dead, is also given up, and the persons engaged in conducting the interment, must take all the requisites with them, without asking or receiving any compensation, under pain of instant dismissal.

§ 170. It is now a prevalent complaint, which, so far as the present inquiry has proceeded, appears to be a just one, that in the management of the common grave-yards in this country, human remains are literally treated as earth, by the sextons and gravediggers, and ignorant men to whom that management falls. The popular sentiments are offended by such open practices as that of using an iron borer, to bore down and ascertain whether the ground is occupied by a coffin, and whether it and the contents are sufficiently decayed for removal. Were proper registries kept of all interments and their sites, these, and a knowledge of natural operations, would render such offensive processes unnecessary. There appear to be few parochial grounds in which the remains of any individual of the poorer classes could be found with certainty, for exhumation, or for judicial or other purposes.

§ 171. In the German regulations cited as examples, the public feeling is carefully consulted, and the general principle is acted upon, that the remains, so long as they last, are sacred, and must even be dealt with as sentient. Year after year the regulations for the care of the dead in the house of reception preparatory to interment are scrupulously maintained, on the presumption that a revival may take place, and the action upon the presumption is not relaxed, although perhaps there is no actual probability of such an event taking place. Persons are kept in attendance at the cemetery on this presumption, and with respect to them it is expressly provided:—

(7.) If roughness be shown by a nurse to the dead, he must be punished with instant dismissal, and a notification of the same must be given by the Cemetery Commission, to the police, in order that proper inquiry and punishment be given.

Moral influence of seclusion from thronged places, and of decorative Improvements in National Cemeteries, and arrangements requisite for the satisfactory performance of Funeral Rites.

§ 172. The images presented to the mind by the visible arrangements for sepulture, are inseparably associated with the ideas of death itself to the greater proportion of the population. Neglected or mismanaged burial grounds superadd to the indefinite terrors of dissolution, the revolting image of festering heaps, disturbed and scattered bones, the prospect of a charnel house and its associations of desecration and insult. With burial grounds that are undrained, for example, the associations expressed by the labouring classes on the occasion of burial there, are similar to those which would arise on plunging a sentient body into a “watery grave.” Where there is nothing visible to raise such painful associations, a feeling of dislike is manifested to the “common” burial grounds in crowded districts, or to their “dreariness” in the districts which are the least frequented.

The Rev. H. H. Milman, the rector of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, probably adverts to these associations when questioned before the Committee of the House of Commons with reference to the expediency of discontinuing burial in his own parish.

2744. In reference to the churchyard of St. Margaret’s, is that full or not?—It is very full.

2745. Can you with convenience inter there?—My own opinion is, that interment ought to be discontinued there for several reasons; not because I have ever heard of any noxious effect upon the health of the neighbourhood, but on account of the public situation; it is a thoroughfare, and, in point of fact, it has been a cemetery so long, and it is so crowded, that interment cannot take place without interfering with previous interments.

Mr. Wordsworth, in a paper first published by Mr. Coleridge, has thus expressed the same sentiments, and the feelings, which it is submitted, are entitled to regard, in legislating upon this subject:—

“In ancient times, as is well known, it was the custom to bury the dead beyond the walls of towns and cities, and among the Greeks and Romans they were frequently interred by the way sides.

“I could here pause with pleasure, and invite the reader to indulge with me in contemplation of the advantages which must have attended such a practice. We might ruminate on the beauty which the monuments thus placed must have borrowed from the surrounding images of nature, from the trees, the wild flowers, from a stream running within sight or hearing, from the beaten road, stretching its weary length hard by. Many tender similitudes must these objects have presented to the mind of the traveller, leaning upon one of the tombs, or reposing in the coolness of its shades, whether he had halted from weariness, or in compliance with the invitation, ‘Pause traveller,’ so often found upon the monuments. And to its epitaph must have been supplied strong appeals to visible appearances or immediate impressions, lively and affecting analogies of life as a journey—death as a sleep overcoming the tired wayfarer—of misfortune as a storm that falls suddenly upon him—of beauty as a flower that passeth away, or of innocent pleasure as one that may be gathered—of virtue that standeth firm as a rock against the beating waves, of hope undermined insensibly like the poplar by the side of the river that has fed it, or blasted in a moment like a pine tree by the stroke of lightning on the mountain top—of admonitions and heart-stirring remembrances, like a refreshing breeze that comes without warning, or the taste of the waters of an unexpected fountain. These and similar suggestions must have given formerly, to the language of the senseless stone, a voice enforced and endeared by the benignity of that nature with which it was in unison.

“We in modern times have lost much of these advantages; and they are but in a small degree counter-balanced to the inhabitants of large towns and cities, by the custom of depositing the dead within or contiguous to their places of worship, however splendid or imposing may be the appearance of those edifices, or however interesting or salutary may be the associations connected with them. Even were it not true, that tombs lose their monitory virtue when thus obtruded upon the notice of men occupied with the cares of the world, and too often sullied and defiled by those cares; yet still, when death is in our thoughts, nothing can make amends for the want of the soothing influences of nature, and for the absence of those types of renovation and decay which the fields and woods offer to the notice of the serious and contemplative mind. To feel the force of this sentiment, let a man only compare, in imagination, the unsightly manner in which our monuments are crowded together in the busy, noisy, unclean, and almost grassless churchyard of a large town, with the still seclusion of a Turkish cemetery in some remote place, and yet further sanctified by the grove of cypress in which it is embosomed.”

§ 173. Careful visible arrangements, of an agreeable nature, raise corresponding mental images and associations which diminish the terrors incident to the aspect of death. Individuals who have purchased portions of decorated cemeteries for their own interment in the metropolis, make a practice of visiting them for the sake, doubtless, of those solemn but tranquil thoughts which the place inspires as personally connected with themselves. The establishment of a cemetery at Highgate was strongly opposed by the inhabitants, but when its decorations with flowers and shrubs and trees, and its quiet and seclusion were seen, applications were made for the purchase of keys, which conferred the privilege of walking in the cemetery at whatever time the purchaser pleased. If the chief private cemeteries in the suburbs of the metropolis were thrown open on a Sunday, they would on fine days be often thronged by a respectful population. Such private cemeteries as have been formed, though pronounced to be only improvements on the places of burial in this country, and far below what it would yet be practicable to accomplish, have indisputably been viewed with public satisfaction, and have created desires of further advances by the erection of national cemeteries. Abroad the national cemeteries have obtained the deepest hold on the affections of the population. I have been informed by an accomplished traveller, who has carefully observed their effects, that cemeteries have been established near to all the large towns in the United States. To some of these cemeteries an horticultural garden is attached; the garden walks being connected with the places of interment, which, though decorated, are kept apart. Those cemeteries are places of public resort, and are there observed, as in other countries, to have a powerful effect in soothing the feelings of those who have departed friends, and in refining the feelings of all. At Constantinople, the place of promenade for Europeans is the cemetery at Pera, which is planted with cypress, and has a delightful position on the side of a hill overlooking the Golden Horn. The greatest public cemetery attached to that capital is at Scutari, which forms a beautiful grove, and disputes in attraction, as a place for readers, with the fountains and cloisters of the Mosques.

§ 174. In Russia, almost every town of importance has its burial place at a distance from the town, laid out by the architect of the government. It is always well planted with trees, and is frequently ornamented with good pieces of sculpture. Nearly every German town has its cemetery at a distance from the town, planted with trees and ornamented with public and private monuments. Most of the cemeteries have some choice works of art or public monument, which alone would render them an object of attraction. For instance, at Saxe Weimar, the cemetery contains the tombs of Goethe and Schiller placed in the mausoleum of the ducal family. In Turkey, Russia, and Germany the poorer classes have the advantages of interment in the national cemeteries. In Russia it is the practice to hold festivals twice a-year over the graves of their friends. In several parts of Germany similar customs prevail. At Munich, the festival on All Saints’ Day (November the 1st) is described as one of the most extraordinary spectacles that is to be seen in Europe.33 The tombs are decorated in a most remarkable manner with flowers, natural and artificial, branches of trees, canopies, pictures, sculptures, and every conceivable object that can be applied to ornament or decorate. The labour bestowed on some tombs requires so much time, that it is commenced two or three days beforehand, and protected while going on by a temporary roof. During the whole of the night preceding the 1st of November, the relations of the dead are occupied in completing the decoration of the tombs, and during the whole of All Saints’ Day and the day following, being All Souls’ Day, the cemetery is visited by the entire population of Munich, including the king and queen, who go there on foot, and many strangers from distant parts. Mr. Loudon states that, when he was there, it was estimated that 50,000 persons had walked round the cemetery in one day, the whole, with very few exceptions, dressed in black. On November the 3rd, about mid-day, the more valuable decorations are removed, and the remainder left to decay from the effects of time and weather.

§ 175. A review of the circumstances influencing the public feeling, and of the tendencies marked by the recent changes of practice in this country, and of the effects of the public institutions for interment amongst other civilised nations, enforce the conclusion that those arrangements to which the attention of the population is so earnestly directed, should be made with the greatest care, and that places of public burial demand the highest order of art in laying out the sites, and decorating them with trees and architectural structures of a solemn and elevating character. National arrangements with such objects, would be followed up and supported by the munificence of private individuals, and by various communities. It is observable in the metropolis, and in the larger towns that the direction of private feeling in the choice of sepulture is less affected by locality or neighbourhood, than by classes of profession or occupation, or social communion when living, and that such feeling would tend to association in the grave and monumental decoration. A proposal has been in circulation for the purchase of a portion of one of the new cemeteries, for the erection of a mausoleum for persons of the naval and military professions—members of the United Service clubs. At the public cemetery of Mayence are interred 150 veteran soldiers, officers and privates, natives of the town, who were buried in one spot, denoted by a monument on which each man’s name and course of service is inscribed in gold letters, and the monument is surmounted by a statue of the general under whom they served. At Berlin there is a cemetery connected with the Invaleiden haus founded by Frederick the Great, in which many of the generals are buried with the private soldiers. The ground is well laid out, and ornamented with monuments, the latest of which are executed by Tieck, and other celebrated sculptors. This cemetery forms the favourite walk of the old soldiers. The great moral force, and the consolation to the dying and the incentive to public spirit whilst living, derivable from the natural regulations of a public cemetery, is almost entirely lost in this country, except in the few cases where public monuments are provided in the cathedrals. In the metropolis it would be very difficult to find the graves of persons of minor fame who have advanced or adorned any branch of civil or military service, or have distinguished themselves in any art or science. Yet there are few occupations which could not furnish examples for pleasurable contemplation to the living who are engaged in them, and claim honour from the public. The humblest class of artisans would feel consolation and honour in interment in the same cemetery with Brindley, with Crompton, or with Murdoch, the artisan who assisted and carried out the conceptions of Watt; or with Emerson, or with Simpson, the hand-loom weaver, who became professor of mathematics at Woolwich; or with Ferguson, the shepherd’s son; or with Dollond, the improver of telescopes, whose earliest years were spent at a loom in Spitalfields; or with others who “have risen from the wheelbarrow” and done honour to the country, and individually gained public attention from the ranks of privates; such for example as John Sykes, Nelson’s cockswain, an old and faithful follower, who twice saved the life of his admiral by parrying the blows that were aimed at him, and at last actually interposed his own person to meet the blow of an enemy’s sabre which he could not by any other means avert, and who survived the dangerous wound he received in this act of heroic attachment. The greater part of the means of honour and moral influence on the living generation derivable from the example of the meritorious dead of every class, is at present in the larger towns cast away in obscure grave-yards and offensive charnels. The artisans who are now associated in communities which have from their beneficent objects a claim to public regard, might if they chose it have their spaces set apart for the members of their own occupation, and whilst they derive interest from association with each other, they would also derive consolation from accommodation within the same precincts as the more public and illustrious dead.

§ 176. It is due to the memory of Sir Christopher Wren, to state that extra-mural or suburban cemeteries formed part of his plan for the rebuilding of London after the great fire. “I would wish,” says he, “that all burials in churches might be disallowed, which is not only unwholesome, but the pavements can never be kept even, nor pews upright: and if the church-yard be close about the church, this is also inconvenient, because the ground being continually raised by the graves, occasions in time a descent by steps into the church, which renders it damp, and the walls green, as appears evidently in all old churches. It will be inquired where, then, shall be the burials?—I answer, in cemeteries seated in the outskirts of the town; and since it has become the fashion of the age to solemnize funerals by a train of coaches (even where the deceased are of moderate condition), though the cemeteries should be half a mile or more distant from the church, the charge need be little or no more than usual; the service may be first performed in the church: but for the poor and such as must be interred at the parish charge, a public hearse of two wheels and one horse may be kept at small expense, the usual bearers to lead the horse, and take out the corpse at the grave. A piece of ground of two acres, in the fields, will be purchased for much less than two roods amongst the buildings. This being enclosed with a strong brick wall, and having a walk round, and two cross walks, decently planted with yew trees, the four quarters may serve four parishes, where the dead need not be disturbed at the pleasure of the sexton, or piled four or five upon one another, or bones thrown out to gain room. In these places beautiful monuments may be erected; but yet the dimensions should be regulated by an architect, and not left to the fancy of every mason; for thus the rich with large marble tombs would shoulder out the poor: when a pyramid, a good bust, or statue on a proper pedestal will take up little room in the quarters, and be properer than figures lying on marble beds: the walls will contain escutcheons and memorials for the dead, and the real good air and walks for the living. It may be considered, further, that if the cemeteries be thus thrown into the fields, they will bound the excessive growth of the city with a graceful border which is now encircled with scavenger’s dung-stalls.”34

§ 177. I might submit the concurrent opinions of several distinguished clergymen, communicated in reference to the general view of the importance of a large change in the practice of town interments, and the formation of suburban cemeteries, as being indeed conformable to the practice of the Jews and early Christians, and recognised in the words “There was a dead man carried out.” It was the ancient practice, as is perhaps indicated in the term exsequies, to bury outside of the town.35 To this practice it is clear that the earliest Christians conformed. It was their custom to assign to the martyrs the most conspicuous places, over which altars or monuments were erected, where the believers used to assemble for nightly worship, so that it may rather be said of them that their burial places were their churches, than that their churches were their burial places.36 When the temples of the heathen gods were converted into Christian churches, the bones or relics of these illustrious persons, together with the altars, were removed and placed within the churches. The early practice of burial in the cemeteries near the earthly remains of those holy persons, being deemed a great privilege when those remains were removed, naturally led to the idea of its continuation, by the interment of bodies in or about the first accustomed objects of worship. Nevertheless, interment in the interior of the church was held to be an unusual piece of good fortune, and when the Emperor Constantine, who had constituted Christianity the religion of the state, had granted to him a grave within the porticos of the church, it was esteemed the most unheard-of distinction. The ancient Greeks and Romans thought that a corpse contaminated a sacred place, and this idea as to the corpse was retained by the early Christians. When some persons in Constantinople began to make an invasion upon the laws, under pretence that there was no express prohibition of burying in churches, Theodosius, by a new law, equally forbade them burying in cities and burying in churches; and this whether it was only the ashes or relics of any bodies kept above ground in urns or whole bodies laid in coffins; for the same reasons that the old laws had assigned, viz., that they might be examples and memorials of mortality and the condition of human nature to all passengers, and also that they might not defile the habitations of the living but leave it pure and clean to them. St. Chrysostom, in one of his homilies upon the martyrs, says, “As before when the festival of the Maccabees was celebrated all the country came thronging into the city; so now when the festival of the martyrs who lie buried in the country is celebrated, it was fit the whole country should remove thither.” In like manner, speaking of the festival of Drossis the martyr, he says, “Though they had spiritual entertainment in the city, yet their going out to the saints in the country afforded them both great profit and pleasure.” The Council of Tribur, in the time of Charlemagne, to prevent the abuse of burying within churches, decreed that no layman should thenceforth be buried within a church; and that if in any church graves were so numerous that they could not be concealed by a pavement the place was to be converted into a cemetery, and the altar to be removed elsewhere and erected in a place where sacrifice could be religiously offered to God.

Amongst the distinct clerical orders of the Primitive Church, Bingham (book iii. chap. 7) reckons the Psalmistæ, the Copiatæ, and the Parabolani. The Psalmistæ, or the canonical singers, were appointed to retrieve and improve the psalmody of the church. The business of the Copiatæ was to take care of funerals and provide for the decent interment of the dead. St. Jerome styles them Fossarii, from digging of graves; and in Justinian’s Novels they are called Lecticarii, from carrying the corpse or bier at funerals. And St. Jerome, speaking of one that was to be interred, “The Clerici,” says he, “whose office it was, wound up the body, digged the earth,” and so, according to custom, “made ready the grave.” Constantine incorporated a body of men to the number of 1100 in Constantinople, under the name of Copiatæ, for the service in question, and so they continued to the time of Honorius and Theodosius, junior, who reduced them to 950; but Anastatius augmented them again to the first number, which Justinian confirmed by two novels, published for that purpose. Their office was to take the whole care of funerals upon themselves, and to see that all persons had a decent and honourable interment. Especially they were obliged to perform this last office to the poorer people without exacting anything of their relations upon that account. The Parabolani were incorporated at Alexandria to the number of 500 or 600, who were deputed to attend upon the sick, and take care of their bodies in time of weakness.37 [Cod. Theod., leg. 43:—“Parabolani, qui ad curanda debilium corpora deputantur, quingentos esse ante præcipimus; sed quia hos minus sufficere in præsenti cognovimus, pro quingentis sex centos constitui præcipimus,” &c.] They were called Parabolani from their undertaking (Παραβολον ἔργον) a most dangerous office in attending the sick. The foundation of a great city like Constantinople must have brought the magnitude of the service of the burial of the whole population distinctly under view, and have necessitated comprehensive and systematic arrangements of a corresponding extent, by the superintendence of superior officers through the gradations of duty of a disciplined force, which, even with the Eastern redundance of service, could scarcely have failed to be efficient and economical as compared with numerous separated and isolated efforts. A great prototype was thus gained, and the well-considered gradations of duty and service of the great city was carried out as far as practicable in the small parish. In some churches, where there was no such standing office as the Copiatæ or the Parabolani, the Penitents were obliged to take upon themselves the office and care of burying the dead; “and this by way of discipline and exercise of humility and charity which were so becoming their station.” Bingham, book xviii. cap. 2. The state of administrative information in these our times may surely be deplored, when any views can be entertained of making the small parish and the rude and barbarous service (multiplied, at an enormous expense) of the really unsuperintended common gravedigger and sexton, the prototypes for this most important and difficult branch of public administration of the greatest metropolis in the modern world.

On a full consideration I think it will be apparent that the exclusion of the burial of corpses in churches or in churchyards, and the adoption of burials in cemeteries, and the conspicuous interment there of all individuals whose lives and services have graced communities, will, in so far as it is carried out, be in principle a return to the primitive practice, restoring to the many the privilege, of which they are necessarily deprived by burials in churches, of association in sepulture with the illustrious dead, and giving to these a wider sphere of attention and honour, and beneficent influence.

On the immediate question of the arrangements for sepulture I beg leave to submit for consideration the following extracts from a communication from the Rev. H. Milman, which is more peculiarly due to him, as his examination before the Committee of the House of Commons does not appear to have elicited his full and matured opinions on the important subject:—

I cannot but consider the sanitary part of the question, as the most dubious, and as resting on less satisfactory evidence than other considerations involved in the inquiry. The decency, the solemnity, the Christian impressiveness of burial, in my opinion, are of far greater and more undeniable importance.

It must unquestionably be a government measure in its management as well as its organization. If you have understood my evidence as recommending parochial, rather than a general administration, such was not my intention. I thought that I had left that point quite open. When I stated (2729) the alternative of cemeteries provided by the national funds, and by parochial taxation, I represented the unpopularity of the latter mode of taxation: and (in 2782) I suggested certain advantages to be derived from the more general and public administration. The Committee, however, who seemed to incline strongly towards the parochial system, went off in that direction, and the questions turned rather on the practicability of that system, and the manner in which it might be organized.

Further reflection leads me to the strong conviction that the parochial system, even if there were no difficulties in forming the union of the smaller parishes for this object, could only furnish so loose and uncertain a superintendence over an affair of such magnitude, and requiring such constant vigilance, as to be altogether inadequate to the purpose. It is not easy, with their present burthens and responsibilities, to fill the parochial offices with men competent to the duty, and with sufficient leisure to devote to it. They are usually filled by men in business of some kind, with considerable sacrifice of their time, and of that attention which is required by their personal concerns. These duties, however are confined, onerous as they sometimes are, to their own immediate neighbourhood. But if we add to their responsibilities, the care of a remote and large churchyard, with all its complicated management, we impose upon them duties so arduous and so incompatible with their own interests and avocations, that the conscientious would shrink from undertaking them, and they would fall into the hands of a lower class of busy persons, anxious for notoriety, or with some remote view of advantage to themselves. It will be absolutely necessary to relieve the parish officers from a burthen which they cannot undertake without a sacrifice, which is more than can be expected from men engaged in business or in some of the active professions. Besides all this, the administration would be constantly passing from one to another; the objection to the whole parochial system, that a man no sooner learns the duty of his office, than he is released from it, would apply in a tenfold degree to an affair of such magnitude. The only way to secure the proper organization and conduct of a remote cemetery, would be by officers, judiciously selected, and adequately paid, who should devote their whole time to the business. Many of these objections, as the want of sufficient time without neglecting more serious duties, would apply to the clergyman of a large town parish, and if the cemetery be made an object of parochial taxation, the less he is involved in it the better.

On the wise and maturely considered organization, and on the provisions for the careful, constant, and vigilant superintendence of the whole system, will depend entirely its fulfilment of its great object, the re-investment of the funeral services, and of the sacred abode of the dead, in their due solemnity and religious influence. Nothing can be more beautiful, more soothing under the immediate influence of sorrow, or at all times more suggestive of tranquil, yet deep religious emotion, than the village churchyard, where the clergyman, the squire, or the peasant, pass weekly or more often by the quiet and hallowed graves of their kindred and friends, to the house of prayer, and where hereafter they expect themselves to be laid at rest under a stone perhaps, on which is expressed the simple hope of resurrection to eternal life, and where all is so peaceful, that the tomb may almost seem as if it might last undisturbed to that time. I am inclined to think that some of the unbounded popularity of Gray’s Elegy, independent of its exquisite poetic execution, may arise from these associations. Of these tranquillizing and elevating influences, so constantly refreshed and renewed, the inhabitants of large cities are of necessity deprived. The churchyard, often very small, always full, and crowded with remains of former interments, either carelessly scattered about, or but ill concealed, is in some cases a thoroughfare, where the religious service is disturbed by the noises, if not of passing and thoughtless strangers, with those of the din and traffic of the neighbouring street; and the new made grave, or the stone, which has just been fixed down, is trampled over by the passing crowd, or made the play-place of idle children. Where, as in some of the larger parishes in the west of London, the burial place is not contiguous to the church, it is more decent, but then it is secluded within high walls, or perhaps by houses, and is only open for the funeral ceremony, at other times inaccessible to the mourning relatives.

But will it not be possible, as we cannot give to the population of the metropolis, and other crowded towns, the quiet, the sanctity, the proximity to the church of the village place of sepulture, to substitute something at least decent, and with more appearance of repose and permanence; if not solemn, serious, and religiously impressive? The poor are peculiarly sensible of these impressions, and to them impression and custom form a great part, the most profound and universal influence of religion; and to them they cannot be given but by some arrangement under the sanction, and with the assistance, of the Government. Private speculation may give something of this kind to the rich, but private speculation looks for a return of profit for its invested capital. To my mind there is something peculiarly repugnant in Joint-Stock Burial and Cemetery Companies. But, setting that aside, they are and can be of no use to the people of the metropolis and the large towns. There always has been, and probably always will be, some distinction in the burial rites (I beg to say that to the credit of my curates, they refuse to make any difference between rich and poor in the services of the church) and in the humbler or more costly grave of rich and poor—

Here lie I beside the door,
Here lie I because I am poor;
Further in the more they pay,
Here lie I as well as they.

But it may be a question whether the very numbers of funerals, which must take place for a large town, with the extent of the burial places, may not be made a source of solemnity and impressiveness, which may in some degree compensate for the individual and immediate interest excited by a funeral in a small parish. That which at present, when left to a single harassed and exhausted clergyman, and one sexton, and a few wretched assistants, can hardly avoid the appearance of hurry and confusion, might be so regulated as to impose, from the very gathering of such masses of mortality, bequeathed together to their common earth, not (let me be understood) in one vault or pit, but each apart in his decent grave. The vast extent of cemetery which would be required for London (suppose six or eight for the whole metropolis and its suburbs), if properly kept, and with such architectural decorations, and the grand and solemn shade of trees appropriate to the character of the ground, could scarcely fail to impress the reflective mind, and even to awe the more thoughtless. Our national character, and our more sober religion, will preserve us, probably, from the affectations and fantastic fineries of the Père la Chaise ground at Paris. From some of the German cemeteries we may learn much as to regulation, and the proper character to be maintained in a cemetery of the dead.

National sepulture is a part, and a most important part of national religion; of all the beautiful services of our Church, none is more beautiful (I might wish, perhaps, two expressions altered) than our service for burial. I could have wished that the Church had taken the initiative in this great question. I trust that she will act, if the State can be prevailed upon to move, in perfect harmony with the general feeling on the subject. It is fortunate, that in the Bishop of London we have not merely a person of liberal mind, and practical views, but one who brings the experience of the parish priest of a large London living to his Episcopal authority and influence.

One further practical suggestion occurs to me as likely most materially to diminish the expenditure of funerals of all classes, and therefore to render any great scheme more feasible. A funeral procession through the streets of a great and busy town can scarcely be made impressive. Not even the hearse, in its gorgeous gloom, with all the pomp of heraldry, and followed by the carriages of half the nobility of the land, will arrest for an instant the noise and confusion of our streets, or awaken any deeper impression with the mass than idle curiosity. While the poor man, borne on the shoulders of men as poor as himself, is jostled off the pavement; the mourners, at some crossing, are either in danger of being run over or separated from the body; in the throng of passers no sign of reverence, no stirring of conscious mortality in the heart. Besides this, if, as must be the case, the cemeteries are at some distance, often a considerable distance, from the homes of the deceased, to those who are real mourners nothing can be more painful or distressing than this long, wearisome, never-ending—perhaps often interrupted—march; while those who attend out of compliment to the deceased while away the time in idle gossip in the mourning coach, to which perhaps they endeavour to give—but, if their feelings are not really moved, endeavour in vain to give—a serious turn. Abandon, then, this painful and ineffective part of the ceremony; let the dead be conveyed with decency, but with more expedition, under trustworthy care, to the cemetery; there form the procession, there assemble the friends and relatives; concentrate the whole effect on the actual service, and do not allow the mind to be disturbed and distracted by the previous mechanical arrangements, and the extreme wearisome length of that which, if not irreverent and distressing, cannot, from the circumstances, be otherwise than painfully tedious.

It may be worth observing that, in London, even the passing bell seems almost lost in the din and confusion. This is the case even in the old churches, which retain their deep, full, and sonorous bells. The quick shrill gingle, or the feeble tone of those which are placed in the chapels of the more recent burial-grounds, instead of deepening to my ear, are utterly discordant with the solemnity of the service. In the country nothing can be finer than the tolling from some old grey church tower—

Over some wide watered shore,
Swinging slow with solemn roar.

What would be the effect of a bell as large as St. Paul’s, heard at stated times, or in the event of the funeral of some really distinguished persons, from the distant cemetery?

§ 178. The formation of national cemeteries would give the means of more special and appropriate service for the interment of the dead than it is now possible to provide by small parochial establishments. In the more populous parishes, the service is unavoidably hurried. In all, the feelings of survivors require the most full, respectful, and impressive service. In many of the rural districts, the friends and fellow-workmen of the deceased accompany the remains to the grave, and one object of subscriptions to burial and general benefit clubs is to secure the advantages of arrangements for the attendance of fellow-workmen, who are members of the same club. When a waterman dies, to whom his brethren would pay respect, the body is conveyed by them in an eight-oared cutter, to the churchyard by the water-side. On their return, the seat which the deceased would have occupied is left vacant, and his oar, tied with a piece of crape, is placed across the boat. One of the most popular and impressive of funeral ceremonies is that on the interment of a private soldier. When a private of the metropolitan police dies, a number of members of the force, and a superior officer, attend his funeral in their uniforms. It is not unfrequent when a member has been invalided and left the force, that he will make it a dying request that his funeral may be attended by the officer and men with whom he served. This request is generally complied with. Old soldiers who have been invalided frequently make it a dying request to the commanders of the regiments in which they have served that they may be buried as if they had died in the service; and unless there be an exception to the respectability of their conduct, the honour and consolation is bestowed.

§ 179. In Scotland, it is a subject of intense desire on the part of the labouring classes to gain the attendance of some person of higher condition at their funerals. When an aged and exemplary member of a congregation dies, it is not unfrequent that the minister’s eldest son will pay respect, by acting as one of the bearers of the corpse. In many of the rural districts in England, the persons composing the procession will sing hymns. In the churches, anthems are still sung, and funeral discourses given in the manner described by the Rev. Dr. Russell, the rector of Bishopsgate.

When I was a boy (says the reverend gentleman), nothing was more common, in the parish of which my father was rector, than for the body to be brought into church before the commencement of the evening service on Sundays. The psalms and lessons appointed for the burial service were read instead of the psalms and the second lesson of the evening. At the time of singing, a portion of those psalms which have reference to the shortness of life was sung; and sometimes an ambitious choir would attempt a hymn—‘Vital spark of heavenly flame,’ or the like. Since I have been in orders, I have myself occasionally, in the country, buried persons with a similar service. Sometimes funeral sermons were preached.

§ 180. The natives of the provinces, when they attend the remains of their friends to the grave in London, frequently express a wish to have anthems or such solemnities as those to which they have been accustomed.38

§ 181. The formation of national cemeteries would enable the ecclesiastical authorities to provide means for complying with the desire thus expressed. Under general arrangements, with reduced expenses, it will be seen that ample pecuniary provision for it may be made to give to the funerals of the many the most impressive solemnity. On this subject, the Rev. Mr. Stone, rector of Spitalfields, observes—

Should the legislature determine upon removing the burial of the dead from populous places, it would get rid of these mischiefs; and should it adopt a national system of burial instead of the highly objectionable parochial system sketched out in Mr. Mackinnon’s Bill, it might do much more—it might greatly add to the solemnity of our burial obsequies, and so make them at once more impressive and more attractive. This might be done by concentration; instead of the parochial clergyman, hurried to the performance of this affecting service, when his time, attention, and sympathies are engaged by other duties, summoned desultorily to it, and often compelled to repeat it over and over again at the same grave, just as the interest or the convenience of undertakers, the caprice, the bigotry, or the carousals of mourners may choose to prescribe, let ministers appointed to officiate in national cemeteries perform the service over great numbers at once, and at two or three stated hours in every day. But the performance of the burial service over great numbers at the same time would add incalculably to its solemnity. In the present state of things, simultaneous interments are supposed, as they certainly are primarily intended, merely to save the time and labour of the clergy; and they may sometimes be hurried through in a manner so careless, slovenly, and unfeeling, as not even the necessities of the clergy can excuse. But it is quite a confusion of ideas to suppose that the practice itself is slovenly and unfeeling. On the contrary, I find it more impressive in its effect upon myself; and I think it must prove so to others. Two or three coffins, placed with their sable draperies in the body of the church, are in themselves an awful spectacle; and the attendant mourners, occupying the surrounding pews clothed in the same livery of death, form a congregation at once appropriate, and large enough to give effect to a religious service. By their numbers, too, they operate against the intrusion of idle gossips and inquisitive gazers, and, associated as they are with each other in a bereavement of the same kind, they are thus brought into a contact calculated to kindle emotions of social sympathy and religious sensibility. Assembled in the burial ground round the same grave, or disposed in groups by the side of graves within a reasonable distance of each other, they form a picture of the same affecting and impressive character. If the sympathy of a public assembly is perceptible or intense in proportion to the numbers that compose it, this aggregation of burials need only be limited by the effective power of the human voice.

Judging from an experiment of my own, I think that these salutary effects would be heightened to a thrilling degree by music. And from the practice of the highest civil and ecclesiastical authorities, I presume that the introduction of music into the burial office is not inconsistent with the rubric. At a burial already alluded to, I acceded to a special request by allowing the introduction of some organ-music; and, having no rubrical directions on the point, I selected two parts of the service as those in which music seemed to me to be most admissible, and most likely to prove impressive. After the officiating minister has preceded the corpse from the entrance of the church and read the introductory sentences, there is an interval, during which he ascends the desk, the mourners take their places in the pews assigned to them, and the corpse is deposited in the body of the church; and there is a still longer interval, during which the melancholy procession leaves the church for the burial ground. I found that both these intervals, which are unavoidably disturbed by somewhat bustling and noisy arrangements, were most usefully and effectively filled up by the introduction of music. The subjoined scheme of the music performed at royal burials will prove that I was not mistaken in supposing music consistent with the rubric, nor much so in selecting those parts of the service, at which I prescribed its introduction. It will also serve to show to what an extent music might be made to give effect and attractiveness to a national burial of the dead.

Parts of the Service.		Musical Composer.
“I am the resurrection,” &c.	Sung	Croft.
“I know that my Redeemer liveth,” &c.	Ditto	Croft.
“We brought nothing into this world,” &c.	Ditto	Croft.
The Psalms are chanted	Chant in G minor Purcell.

After the lesson, and before the removal of the corpse from its station in the choir, an anthem is introduced ad libitum.

“Man that is born of a woman,” &c.	Sung	Croft.
“In the midst of life,” &c.	Ditto	Croft.
“Yet, O Lord God, most holy,” &c.	Ditto	Croft.
“Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets,” &c.	Ditto	Purcell.
“I heard a voice from heaven,” &c.	Ditto	Croft.

Immediately before the Collect, “O merciful God,” or sometimes, though very seldom, before “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” an anthem is introduced ad libitum.

At the close of the service, while the mourners are moving off, the Dead March in Saul is played on the organ.

The anthems usually selected are two of the following:—

“When the ear heard,” &c.	Handel.
“I have set God always before me,” &c.	Blake.
“The souls of the righteous,” &c.	Dupuis.
“Hear my prayer,” &c.	Kent.

On the burial of esteemed members of the cathedral choirs, the other choristers have sung the highest and most solemn of the church music.

§ 182. Where the circumstances described, in respect to the Protestant population, have prevented compliance with the popular desire for hymns or anthems to be sung or sermons to be spoken at the burial at the parochial churches in London, interment has been purchased for the express purpose of obtaining them at the trading burial grounds. And yet it may be submitted that the desire is consistent with the earliest recognized practice for all classes,39 and that a system of national cemeteries would in proportion to the numbers interred in them, furnish valuable cases as examples for its beneficial exercise, and must, to a great extent, prevent the misapplication of the service to such cases as have apparently caused it to fall in public esteem.

“The honour,” says Hooker, “generally due unto all men maketh a decent interring of them to be convenient, even for very humanity’s sake. And therefore so much as is mentioned in the burial of the widow’s son, the carrying him forth upon a bier and accompanying him to the earth, hath been used even amongst infidels, all men accounting it a very extreme destitution not to have at least this honour due to them.” * * * * “Let any man of reasonable judgment examine whether it be more convenient for a company of men, as it were, in a dumb show to bring a corpse to a place of burial, there to leave it, covered with earth, and so end, or else to have the exsequies devoutly performed with solemn recitals of such lectures, psalms, and prayers, as are purposely framed for the stirring up of men’s minds into a careful consideration of their estate both here and hereafter.

“In regard to the quality of men, it hath been judged fit to commend them unto the world at their death amongst the heathen in funeral orations; amongst the Jews in sacred poems; and why not in funeral sermons amongst Christians? Us it sufficeth that the known benefit hereof doth countervail millions of such inconveniences as are therein surmised, although they were not surmised only, but found therein.” * * * “The care no doubt of the living, both to live and die well, must needs be somewhat increased when they know that their departure shall not be folded up in silence, but the ears of many be made acquainted with it. The sound of these things do not so pass the ears of them that are most loose and dissolute in life, but it causeth them one time or other to wish, ‘Oh that I might die the death of the righteous, and that my end might be like his.’ Thus much peculiar good there doth grow at those times by speech concerning the dead; besides the benefit of public instruction common unto funeral with other sermons.”—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. ch. lxxv.

“When thou hast wept awhile,” says Jeremy Taylor, in his Holy Dying, “compose the body to burial; which, that it be done gravely, decently, and charitably, we have the example of all nations to engage us, and of all ages of the world to warrant; so that it is against common honesty and public fame and reputation not to do this office.”—“The church, in her funerals of the dead, used to sing psalms and to give thanks for the redemption and delivery of the soul from the evil and dangers of mortality.”—“Solemn and appointed mournings are good expressions of our dearness to the departed soul, and of his worth and our value of him, and it hath its praise in nature, and in manners, and in public customs; but the praise of it is not in the gospel, that is, it hath no direct and proper uses in religion; for if the dead did die in the Lord, then there is joy to him, and it is an ill expression of our affection and our charity to weep uncomfortably at a change that hath carried my friend to the state of a huge felicity.”—“Something is to be given to custom, something to fame, to nature and to civilities, and to the honour of deceased friends; for that man is esteemed to die miserable for whom no friend or relation sheds a tear, or pays a solemn sigh. I desire to die a dry death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral; some flowers sprinkled on my grave would do 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.” * * * *

“Concerning doing honour to the dead the consideration is not long. Anciently the friends of the dead used to make their funeral oration, and what they spake of greater commendation was pardoned on the accounts of friendship; but when Christianity seized on the possession of the world, this charge was devolved on priests and bishops, and they first kept the custom of the world and adorned it with the piety of truth and of religion; but they also ordered it that it should not be cheap; for they made funeral sermons only at the death of princes, or of such holy persons ‘who shall judge the angels.’ The custom descended, and in the channels mingled with the veins of earth, through which it passed; and now-a-days, men that die are commended at a price, and the measure of their legacy is the degree of their virtue. But these things ought not so to be; the reward of the greatest virtue ought not to be prostitute to the doles of common persons, but preserved like laurels and coronets to remark and encourage the noblest things. Persons of an ordinary life should neither be praised publicly, nor reproached in private; for it is an offence and charge of humanity to speak no evil of the dead, which I suppose, is meant concerning things not public and evident; but then neither should our charity to them teach us to tell a lie, or to make a great flame from a heap of rushes and mushrooms, and make orations crammed with the narrative of little observances, and acts of civil, necessary, and eternal religion. But that which is most considerable is, that we should do something for the dead, something that is real and of proper advantage. That we perform their will, the laws oblige us, and will see to it; but that we do all those parts of personal duty which our dead left unperformed, and to which the laws do not oblige us, is an act of great charity and perfect kindness.”—“Besides this, let us right their causes and assert their honour:” * * “and certainly it is the noblest thing in the world to do an act of kindness to him whom we shall never see, but yet hath deserved it of us, and to whom we would do it if he were present; and unless we do so, our charity is mercenary, and our friendships are direct merchandise, and our gifts are brocage: but what we do to the dead, or to the living for their sakes, is gratitude, and virtue for virtue’s sake, and the noblest portion of humanity.”