last obsequies.' The same practice anciently
existed among the Colchians, and has been
remarked by modern travellers among the
Illinois of North America, and the savage
inhabitants of the Aleutian islands. Even
in this revolting custom we trace a desire—
savagely indulged, it is true—to ward off the
bad effects of putrefaction by a speedy
disposal of the air-polluting remains of the dead.

Among the Caffres, Hottentots, and other
savage tribes of Southern Africa, adjoining
the European settlements, it seems to have
been customary to expose aged and helpless
people in desert places, and leave them to
die, because of a superstition against any
one expiring in a hut. Intercourse with
civilisation is mitigating this and other
barbarities.

Of the means used to avert the evils of
decay by preservation, none are more singular
than those mentioned by Captain Tuckey, as
in force upon the river Congo. The people
envelope their corpses in cloth; the smell of
putrefaction being only kept in by the quantity
of wrappers. These are successively
multiplied as they can be procured, or according
to the rank of the deceased. The bulk thus
attained is only limited by the power of
conveyance to the grave; so that the first hut in
which the body is deposited becoming too
small, a second, a third—even to a sixth—
each larger than the former, is placed over it.

The South American savages run no risks
from the putrefying remains of their dead.
The Orinoco tribes fasten them by a rope to
the trunk of a tree on the shore and sink the
body in the river. In the course of four and
twenty hours the skeleton is picked perfectly
clean by the fish. Bones alone are reverenced
in this part of the world. The inhabitants of
the Pampas and other South American tribes
bury only the bones of the dead, the flesh
having been first removed from them: an
operation performed by the women. While
the work of dissection is going on, the men
walk round the tent, covered with long
mantles, singing a mournful tune, and
striking the ground with their spears, to
drive away the evil spirits. The bones, being
prepared, are packed up in a hide, and
conveyed on a favourite horse of the deceased to
the family burial-place, sometimes hundreds
of miles distant. Being disposed in their
natural order and tied together so as to form
a skeleton, they are clothed in the deceased's
best attire, and ornamented with beads and
feathers. The skeleton is placed in a sitting
posture, with the carcases of horses, killed—
in order that their master may ride them in
the next world—in a pit or grave, which is
then covered over. Among all the customs of
unenlightened mankind, there are few more
remarkable than this provision for the material
wants of the dead in another state of existence.
In all ages, and in most parts of the world,
the dead man has been sent to his long home,
furnished with servants, horses, dogs, domestic
utensils—every article of physical comfort and
enjoyment he is supposed to require. Money
has been supplied for his journey, and even
(as among the Jukati of Siberia) food has
been put into his coffin, 'that he may not
hunger on his road to the dwelling of souls.'
'As if,' quaintly remarks an ancient Spanish
traveller, 'the infernal regions were a long
way off.' But in eveiy instance the corpse has
been so dealt with as to prevent injury to
those who still exist.

It is now time to allude to our own burial
customs, and to the great reform which
happily has at length begun. It appears
extraordinary, that amidst the advance which
has been made in social and sanitary science,
Great Britain should be the last to give
up the unwholesome custom of continuing
the dead as near neighbours to the quick.
The long conservation of this evil has mainly
arisen from a sentiment of the superior
sanctity of burial-places in and near to sacred
edifices. That this is, however, an unqualified
superstition, it is not difficult to prove, by
tracing it to its root. Joseph Bingham states
in his Origines Ecclesiasticæ, that churchyards
owe their origin to respect paid to the remains
of saints and martyrs, which was shown first
by building churches and chapels over them,
and then by a general desire of people to be
interred as near to their sacred dust as
possible. This privilege was only for a time
accorded to Emperors and Kings, but so
early as the sixth century the commonalty
were allowed places, not only under the
church wall, but in the consecrated space of
ground surrounding it. Bodies were not
deposited within the church till after a long
struggle on the part of the heads of the
Church.*

* Several canons were issued against this now universal
abuse. Among others, the 18th of the Council of Brague
(Portugal) in 563. The 72nd of the Council of Meaux (845),
the 17th of the Council of Tribur, 895, &c.

So far from burying in churches, corpses
were not admitted into parish churches, even
for the funeral service to be read over them,
except under special circumstances. An
interesting canon—the 15th of the Council of
Tribur—runs thus, 'The funeral service must
only be performed in the church where the
bishop resides: that is to say in the cathedral
of the diocese. If that church be too distant,
it may be celebrated in some other, where
there is a community of canons, monks, or
religious orders; in order that the deceased
may have the benefit of their prayers. Should
again that be impossible, the service may be
performed where the defunct during life paid
tythes: this is in his parish church.' By a
previous canon (one of the Council of Meaux)
no burial fees could be exacted by the clergy,
although the relations were allowed to give
alms to the poor. This injunction was but
little observed either at or after the time it
was laid, in 845.

The unwholesome practice of intra-