man is quite free to bury his treasures with
himself."

Brilliant propositions have been made to
me to carry my industry abroad; but I cling
to my country, and shall not emigrate.

BURNING, AND BURYING.

IN the reports of the Medical Officers of
Health for London, we read that in the
Victoria Park Cemetery, last year, every Sunday,
one hundred and thirty bodies were interred;
which fact one of the medical journals
expressed by saying that there were sixteen
thousand pounds of mortal matter added on
that day alone to the already decomposing
mass.  At the time when we were reading
about such things, " A Member of the Royal
College of Surgeons " issued a pamphlet
upon an old subject of ours, Burning the
Dead, or Urn Sepulture.  Our own arguments
upon that subject we have used already; but
the surgeon proves to be a most intelligent
ally; and a brief statement of his argument
may be of service in these columns.  This
it is:

The soul of a man is indestructible, and at
death parts from the body.  Of matter only
the elements are, humanly speaking,
indestructible.  The body of man is made up of
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, with
small quantities of phosphorus, sulphur,
calcium, iron, and some other metals.  By
the law to which all matter is subject, man's
body, when done with, decomposes into these
elements, that they may be used for other
purposes in nature.  Can it matter to him
whether the process be effected rapidly or
slowly?

Upon the doubt as to the possibility of
resurrection when our bodies have been
burnt instead of rotted, the surgeon lays the
balm of texts: " That which thou sowest,
thou sowest not the body that shall be;"
and " we shall be changed."  But he adds:
those who claim to have hereafter the whole
identical body back again, must remember,
that in life it wastes and is renewed, so that
if every particle that ever belonged to the
frame of an old man were returned to him,
he would get matter enough to make twelve
or twenty bodies.  It is just possible that
somebody may be comforted with a theory
which the surgeon quotes in a note, that
the soul carries away with it out of the world
one atom of matter which is the seed of the
future body, and that these seminal atoms
not being here, need not be included in our
calculations about things material.

If we could, by embalming, keep the form
of the departed upon earth, that would be
much; but, for any such purpose, embalming
fails.  Decay will use its effacing fingers.
"In the museum of the College of Surgeons
in London, may be seen the tirst wife of one
Martin Van Butchell, who, at her husband's
request, was embalmed by Dr. William
Hunter and Mrs. Carpenter, in the year
seventeen hundred and seventy-five.  No
doubt extraordinary pains were taken to
preserve both form and feature; and yet,
what a wretched mockery of a once lovely
woman it now appears, with its shrunken
and rotten-looking bust, its hideous,
mahogany-coloured face, and its remarkably fine
set of teeth!  Between the feet are the
remains of a green parrot—whether immolated
or not at the death of its mistress is uncertain;
but as it still retains its plumage, it is
a far less repulsive object than the larger
biped."  There was a law-suit once, to try
the right of a dead man to an iron coffin,
when Lord Stowell decided that, "All
contrivances that, whether intentionally or not,
prolong the time of dissolution beyond the
period at which the common local
understanding and usage have fixed it, form an act
of injustice, unless compensated in some way
or other."  And when an iron coffin has been
opened, after lapse of years, what has been
found ?  Chiefly dry grubs of worms and
other insects that have fed upon the flesh.
Socrates exhorted his friends, " Let it not
be said that Socrates is carried to the grave
and buried; such an expression were an
injury done to my immortal part."  Not very
long ago, a hardened murderer being told
by the judge that his body, after hanging,
would be given for dissection, said, " Thank
you, my lord; it is well you cannot dissect
my soul."  We should look upward, and
not downward, when we stand beside the
grave.

The surgeon replies to those who regard
cremation as a heathen custom, it is not
more heathen than burying in holes.  Sprinkling
earth on the coffin is a heathen custom
based upon a heathen superstition, but
converted to a Christian use.  He gives
interesting illustrations of the use of urn-burial
by many nations, but reminds us that the
cost of fuel was one obstacle to its general
adoption in old times.  Ground was to be
had more cheaply than the materials necessary
for the humblest burning, when it was
requisite to burn on large piles in the open
air.  " The Christians, however," says Sir
Thomas Browne,  "abhorred this way of
obsequies; and though they stickt not to
give their bodies to be burnt in their lives,
detested that mode after death."  But whatever
reason Christians had in the first days
of Christianity against the burning of their
bodies, they have left behind them no objection
founded on a permanent religious principle.
We, now, bury in graves and build
funeral urns in stone as emblems.

The report of the French Academy of
Medicine upon the effect of cemeteries on the
health of Paris, has led in France to the
bestowing of much serious attention on the
subject of cremation; and there is sober
discussion of the plan of M. Bonneau, who
proposes to replace all cemeteries near great