parish acknowledged it was very bad."
Not a window facing the graveyard could be
opened, notwithstanding the oppressive heat
of the day. "Some of the residents were
obliged to leave their houses for a time;
persons passing along Portugal Street held
their nostrils; a policeman standing at the
door of King's College Hospital was seized
with vomiting, and one of the physicians of
that institution who approached the open
grave was suddenly seized with giddiness,
and would have fallen down if he had not
been supported by another gentleman." But
upon all this the mock archdeacon, more
stubborn than the beadle, having just
dismissed as a cant phrase a very short and
useful scientific word in use now throughout
Europe, is represented as producing Scripture
as an argument for filth and corruption,
which is the boldest use of cant in our
experience. "Nature," he says, "as well as
Scripture, attests that every creature of God
is good, and that death, not less than life,
subserves in time to the good of man."
Presently he is made to say, "it is certain
that the contact with putrescence does not
generally injure health or shorten life."
Perhaps there may be a trap set in that sentence,
reservation being made of inhalation of it as
it floats upon the air, and absorption of it
through the lungs into the blood. "It is a
remarkable fact," we are told, "not
unimportant to the present inquiry, that of all
beings man alone is buried. Organic life is
the noblest work of chemical combination
elaborated by the hand of Nature, which is
God's minister." Another angel in the
Hierarchy, of whom we never heard before.
In ordinary life, men give the word Nature
to the works of the All-wise, because a just
feeling of reverence restrains them from the
constant and familiar handling of His sacred
name. It does not therefore follow that this
word Nature should be elevated to the
dignity of angel, by an orator who speaks to
ministers of God, and whose express mission
it is to hold discourse of sacred things. No
matter; such, we are told, is organic life—
the wholesome tying of a knot, whereof
organic death is but the untying. We see,
therefore, "how innoxious a thing in respect
of life is death." There are vast numbers of
animals who, not being eaten up, "die by the
hand of death" (whatever that may mean), and
are not deposited in graves when they become
what the archdeacon calls, or is made to call,
"dead corpses." Who is the worse for that?
the author of the charge humorously
inquires.

It is hardly necessary to say, that when
the body of the animal decays, it stinks;—
that the use in nature of the stink is to
warn people that there lies something which
they ought not to come near. If the author
of the charge would any day next
summer pocket the first dead cat that he may
chance to pick up in the streets, carry it
home, and put it in his pot-pourri jar, upon
his study table or beneath his bed, he will
not, after short experience wait to inquire
"who is the physiologist who will say,
avoid that" cat. The admonition of nature
in this matter— except in the case of animals
expressly created to get rid of offal by
devouring it—is not lost on either man or
beast.

But here, again, the satirist represents the
archdeacon as blowing down his own
cardhouse of argument. "If," he says, "the
vicinities of some churchyards be unwholesome,
it will be found on a candid examination, that
other causes of disease exist there, such as
filth and poverty; such as everywhere
engenders disease, whether in the proximity
of a churchyard or not." But filth is putrescent
matter, animal or vegetable, and poverty
represents only the weakness upon which it
preys. If filth, according to the archdeacon,
everywhere engenders disease, when the poor
man has it for his own free heritage, why
may it not do so when it is maintained for
him by free-worshipping dignitaries of the
church as a foundation of religion and good
morals?

If we have not said enough to prove that
this is not really a charge of the Archdeacon
of London to his clergy, but a harsh satire
by some person against a clergyman upon
whose good livings his mind is too much
fixed, the evidence of a malicious intent in
the concluding passages is irresistible. The
speaker is supposed to call attention to his
experience of the moral advantage derived
from his own contemplation of the tombs. In
the chapel of the Charter-house, how
interesting to the members of the foundation
are the memorials of the dead! There our
founder has reposed beneath a splendid tomb
for nearly two centuries and a half; and,
being dead, yet speakefch to us all,— both
old and young—reminding us not to
disgrace his bounty and exciting us to
thankfulness.

After showing how the tomb of the founder
has enabled him to feel thankful for moneys
received, the master of the Charter-house is
made to regret that no future Carthusian
can consign his body, as the late Lord
Ellenborough did, to be interred in the founder's
vault in token of his affection for the place
of his education, and to be even in death an
example to stimulate his schoolfellows to
exertions like his, in the hope of a like
reward. Noble reward, truly! to lie in the
grave beside a man whose only virtue was that
after he made heaps of money by unchristian
practices—by usury and by the fitting out of
privateers—he hoped to benefit his soul by
getting men to spend it piously when he was
dead. But for his legacy he shall be
accounted holy. Does not the archdeacon
eat thereof, and is not the charity
notoriously subject to mismanagement? The
stroke of satire was too sharp; but his enemy,