THE CONVENT OF THE CAPUCHINS. 675 



It may here, of course, be objected that the earth is really spacious 

 enough for all our wants, and that crowded cemeteries are the result 

 of heedlessness, not of necessity. But in this remark there is no more 

 truth than in the commonplace answer to Malthusian arguments, that 

 there are plenty of thinly settled districts still to be occupied. Space 

 there is, no doubt, both for the living and for the dead, if they could 

 be conveniently carried to it ; but there is often too little space where 

 people find themselves obliged to live and die. Crowds are a necessity 

 of progress, it seems ; at all events, the art of getting on well in soli- 

 tude has not yet been discovered, and we are required by nature to find 

 ways of helping our neighbors where they are, rather than of sending 

 them away. At least, let us find ways to avoid injuring them. 



Provision must be made in the neighborhood of large towns for 

 numerous interments. The land available for the purpose is limited 

 by the wants of the living, who can not afford to leave large tracts un- 

 occupied. To make cemeteries serve the purpose of parks and plea- 

 sure-grounds would be certainly indecorous and probably unwholesome. 

 On the whole, it is scarcely possible that, under existing cii'cumstances, 

 our burying-grounds should not be overcrowded. 



For the inhabitants of maritime districts it has been suggested that 

 the sea, at a sufficient distance from shore, might serve a good purpose 

 as a cemetery. But the practical objections to this plan, resulting from 

 occasional periods of stormy weather, and from the impossibility of 

 recovering corpses wanted for identification or for medical examina- 

 tion, are sufficient to condemn it. It would, moreover, be disagreeable 

 in most cases to the feelings of surviving relatives and friends, and ac- 

 ceptable only when, as at present in many cases of death at sea, it is 

 the only practicable method. 



Most of the objections just enumerated apply with equal or still 

 greater force to the more frequently discussed method of cremation. 

 It is not desirable, either from a legal and medical or from a senti- 

 mental point of view, that a body should be destroyed soon after it 

 has ceased to live. To effect this destruction in a thoroucrh and deco- 

 rous manner by burning is expensive, if attempted without complicated 

 apparatus, the original cost of which must, in any case, be considerable. 

 We may neglect more remote and perhaps fanciful objections, such as, 

 for example, that the world's natural stock of ammonia might be seri- 

 ously reduced in the course of centuries, if the process of decay were 

 extensively replaced by that of complete combustion. 



After reviewing the various substitutes for burial which have been 

 tried or suggested, it happens with most minds that none of them 

 seem on the whole to be improvements. It remains, then, to find a 

 form of burial which will accomplish its purpose effectively and with- 

 out offense or danger to the living. This form must, accordingly, be 

 such that the earth employed for the purpose of burial shall be free 

 from moisture or any other hindrance to rapid and inoffensive decom- 



