20 



matter of regret that the old Roman practice of incinerating 

 the body had gone out before my day. Then that deep craving 

 which man by an instinct has to preserve his dead near him 

 could have been gratified. Burial-grounds Avere well enough in 

 days when people travelled little. A man would lie with the 

 forefathers of the hamlet in the peaceful repose of the churchyard 

 shadowed by the yews under which he had sat and talked ^vith 

 those now joined with him in silent converse. But when men 

 began to travel, the instinct represented in the family vault 

 could not so easily be gratified, and it is a loss to have one's 

 friends lying all over the world, instead of gathered in a home 

 sanctuary. But if this were all, it might be mere sentiment- 

 I am, however, bound to suppose that it is no mere sentiment 

 which makes people revolt from having the graveyards of their 

 ancestors destroyed. But, despite this feeling, graveyards are 

 always being destroyed. This has from the first been the case 

 with unconsecrated burial-grounds. I have known a thickly- 

 populated neighbourhood in "Whitechapel occupy the site of a 

 disused burial-groimd. It was only by the strongest protest 

 on the part of the public, that the historic cemetery of Bunhill 

 Fields was saved from the grasp of the Ecclesiastical Commis- 

 sioners, for whose proceedings in this matter I .should not be 

 inclined to apologise. But the rich who can attain an undisturbed 

 freehold, made sure to them and their posterity for ever, as surely 

 as Abraham's first possession, little reck of liow entirely the poor 

 are at the mercy of the owners of cemeteries and other burial- 

 grounds. And even these can be disinherited of their possession 

 by means of an Act of Parliament. So that for rich or poor, 

 if they care to preserve the remains of their friends, there is 

 no such certainty as would be involved in a return to the old 

 practice of cremation. By this means the remains are made 

 moveable like the title-deeds of their estates. And if the Moors 

 carried the keys of their Spanish castles across the water, our 

 emigrants might perpetuate in their new home a remembrance 

 of their ancestors. 



There is another reason wliich I should like to touch upon 

 whilst dealing with the more sentimental side of the question. 



