are a couple of dog-kennels at another part. Upon
inquiring to whom they belonged, the schoolmaster of
the parochial schools informed me that they were his
property, adding that the management of the ground
had been left by the churchwardens in his hands for
the last three or four years, and that he made use of it
as a convenient place to keep his fowls in. At the
present season of the year, he said, it did not look nice;
but in summer the grass grew quite beautifully.
Before his time, the graveyard, he told me, was in a
horrible state, and not fit to be entered by anyone,
being ankle deep in many places with excrement,
which had been thrown out from the houses in Cloth-
fair, and no better than a common dung-yard. Yet
then, or at least not very long before, it was the pauper
burial-ground for the parish; and that multitudes of
human corpses have been thrust into it is sufficiently
evident by the great rising of the ground, by many
feet above the level of the adjacent court.

They are not all so bad as that; yet,
inhabitants of London who remember what
its graveyards were before the tardy
interference of the legislature, know that this
sketch does no serious injustice to the class.
In a London churchyard not a whit worse
than the average, a clergyman more careful
about Christian decorum than church-fees,
has thus described the method of burial, the
prevention of which is, according to the
archdeacon's supposed charge, to be injurious in
the highest degree to religion and morals.

The touching association of burial, and the
sublime spirituality of our Burial Service, are broken in
upon by the exhibitions of the most vulgar and even
ludicrous scenes of daily life. The eastern end of
my parish-ground, for instance, abuts upon Brick
Lane, one of our most crowded and noisy thoroughfares,
and at one corner stands a publichouse, which,
of course, is not without its attractions to street
minstrels. So the dead may be buried to the tune of
Pop goes the Weasel, while street-boys wholly
destitute of reverential feeling, climb about the rails,
and offend the mourners with remarks familiar and
offensive. On all these occasions, said the Christian
minister, I labour under the indescribable uneasiness
of feeling out of place. And yet the exposure of my
burial ground is but partial, and is little or nothing
compared with that of many others.

So felt the Reverend W. Stone, vicar of
Spitalfields.

The dead are treated in the mock charge
as objects of church traffic. This charge
is made to begin by stating that attention
was first called to the subject of
intramural interment by Mr, Walker. The
irregularities and indecencies of the graveyards
described by that gentleman, chiefly took place
in those unconsecrated cemeteries which were
the property of individuals, or were attached
to dissenting chapels. Then we come to the
gist of the argument at once. The inquiries
then set on foot, says the preacher, revealed
to the public the extent of the expenditure
upon burial; whilst the profit which then
accrued, not merely to the clergy, but to the
parishes and the undertakers, attracted the
attention of capitalists, and caused the
formation of cemetery companies, who, with
the aid of the legislature, have nearly
succeeded in securing to themselves the monopoly
of burial within the metropolitan district.

In the beginning there was little to be
feared. The cemetery system was at first
unpopular; and, if it had not been for cholera,
it is doubtful whether the cemeteries would
have proved to be a profitable speculation.
The whole mischief came of our rebellion in
not taking the cholera as quietly as Christians
should; who ought to swell and not destroy
the burial-fees of their spiritual pastors and
masters.

Afterwards, medical practitioners began to
make inquiries, proper care of the health
came to be discussed. And now, Science—
profane defrauder of the churchyard!— has
become so bold, as to consider her powers
equal to the contest with this fatal disease, so
that the registrar-general of births, has not
hesitated to ask,— "Is London to continue
every five years to be attacked by pestilence,
and to lose so many thousands of its
inhabitants? Cannot the conditions in which
disease is fatal be determined, and cannot
they be removed?"

Intramural interment, then, came into
question, and legislation for its abolition was
commenced, as the archdeacon is made to
say, with a special direction that due respect
should be paid to the rights of the clergy.
The committee, saving vested rights in family
vaults and allowing value to the clergy for
the loss of fees, concluded that interment of
bodies was injurious to the health of the
inhabitants of large towns, recommended
legislation, and that, after a certain date, burials
in them should be prohibited. This was
recommending, according to the supposed
argument of the archdeacon, what was in the
highest degree injurious to religion and good
morals; but he is made to add, the report
caused little anxiety. The clergy and parochial
authorities were gratified by the assurance
that their rights would be respected—
that they should not suffer in their pockets!

Thus there is no disguise. The cloak of
religion and morals is worn open, to show the
whole figure of Mammon. One of the first
legislative interferences recorded, is the order
that no coffin should be buried at a less depth
than thirty inches below the ordinary surface
of the ground; then the dangerous state of
many churchyards and vaults led to the
closing of the burial-grounds,—although, as
the archdeacon is made to sneer, if the premises
were true, power might with equal
propriety have been given for shutting up the
churches.

The year eighteen hundred and fifty-one
was remarkable in the eyes of the supposed
archdeacon. It was remarkable in the eyes
of the world for the Great Exhibition ia
Hyde Park, and for some other events; in
the eyes of the archdeacon it was remarkable
for the passing of an act of Parliament which
favoured the commercial speculation of the