of bankrupts, that he had been again swindled.
'And what,' he asked, when he had concluded
this tale of pitiful, contemptible robbery,
'what can a poor fellow do but drink his
cares away, when all striving to be honest
and happy is in vain!'

I thought, but did not say, how uneven
were the laws that sent Jem to the iron
gang for stealing a bullock, and had no punishment
for those who devoured his hard earnings,
and laughed at him from their carriages.
Thank God, a better system has been
established, and government now charges itself with
the passage-money of poor men's relations.

But barren sympathy was of little use, so I
turned to the ploughman, and said, 'What
money have you left?' 'About £10 in the
landlord's hands; he's an honest man, although
a publican.' 'And what are you to have from
this contract?' 'My share will be over £40,
and I can get it done in less than six weeks,
working long hours.' 'Then hand me over
the £10, give me your solemn promise not to
touch anything stronger than Bushman's tea
for twelve months, and to let me have £30 out
of your contract when I return this way, and
I will send the money for you.'

To cut this long story short, I put the business
in the hands of my excellent friend
B******, one of the modern race of Australians,
wealthy, warm-hearted, and liberal,
who was on his way to England. within a
year the ploughman embraced his wife; they
returned with me to my station, they passed
some years with me, and some eventful scenes,
before the district round me was settled.
They have now a station and farm of their
own; they are growing rich, as all such industrious
people do in Australia, but they have
not forgotten that they once were poor. If
you need a subscription for a church, a school,
or a sick emigrant, you may go to Mr. Carden,
safe of a generous answer. It is Mr. Carden
now; and perhaps that fine little boy may
sit a native Representative in an Australian
Parliament. A tall youth who rides beside
him, is not his son but the orphan child
of a poor prisoner, whom he adopted 'to
make up in part,' as he expressed it, 'for
what happened long ago.'

Lucy Carden, now the mother of a numerous
brood of Australians, has grown happy and
portly, although you may trace on her mild
features the tide marks of past griefs.

The last time I saw them I was on my way
to England. 'Oh, sir,' said the happy
husband and father, 'tell the wretched and the
starving how honest, sober labour is sure of a
full reward here. Tell them that here poverty
may be turned to competence, crime to repentance
and happiness. And pray tell the great
gentlemen who rule us that we much need
both preachers and teachers in this wide
Bush of Australia, but that is virtuous
wives who rule us most, and in a lovely land
make the difference between happiness and
misery.'

HEATHEN AND CHRISTIAN BURIAL.

IF, from the heights of our boasted civilisation,
we take a retrospect of past history, or a
survey of other nations—savage nations
included,—we shall, with humiliation, be forced
to acknowledge that in no age and in no
country have the dead been disposed of so
prejudicially to the living as in Great Britain.
Consigning mortal remains to closely-packed
burial-grounds in crowded cities; covering—
scarcely interring them—so superficially that
exposure sometimes shocks the sentiments,
while the exhalations of putrefaction always
vitiate the air, is a custom which prejudice
has preserved the longest to this land. A
calculation made by Dr. Playfair, and quoted
by the Board of Health in their admirable
report on Burials, estimates the amount of
noxious gases evolved annually from the
metropolitan grave-yards alone at 55.261 cubic
feet per acre. The average of corpses packed
into each acre is 1117; therefore, as 52,000
interments take place every year, the entire
amount of poison-gas emitted per annum to
enter the lungs of the Londoners, and hasten
their descent to the grave to contribute fresh
supplies for their successors, is 2,572,580 cubic
feet.

It is our present purpose to see whether
such a fact can be paralleled by researches
into the past or by a short survey of the manners
and customs of existing savage life itself
—adding such of the singular or instructive
funeral ceremonies of the various people as
will prove interesting.

Among the most ancient records are those
of the Egyptians. The care of that extraordinary
people for their dead, both as to
actual preservation and that they should not
become noxious to the living, has never been
surpassed. This partly arose, it is true, from
a superstitious reverence for the material part
of man; but that superstition doubtless
originated from the wise sanitary regulations
of their early sages. The laws of Leviticus—
many of them instituted to prevent disease
and the depreciation of the species—formed,
in like manner, a main part of the religion of
the Jews.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the
soul would return, after the lapse of ages, to
inhabit, in this world, the same body from
which it had been separated by death. In
this belief commenced the process of
embalming by which the bodies of that people have
been preserved with wonderful integrity to the
present day. To so extraordinary a point had
the antiseptic art been brought that, as
appears from Diodorus, there was a mode of
preservation which ensured the retaining of
the eyebrows, eyelashes, and the general
external character of the person, who could be
recognised by their form and features.
'Whence,' says Dr. Pocock, in Travels
through Egypt, 'many of the Egyptians kept
the bodies of their ancestors in houses [but