284 Travels in Italy 



il Cavaliere Fontana in the whole museum of the Grand Duke; 

 he showed me and our party the cabinets of natural history, 

 anatomy, machines, pneumatics, magnetism, optics, etc., which 

 are ranked among the finest collections in the world; and, for 

 arrangement, or rather exhibition, exceed all of them; but 

 note, no chamber for agriculture; no collection of machines 

 relative to that first of arts; no mechanics of great talents or 

 abilities employed in improving, easing, and simplifying the com- 

 mon tools used by the husbandmen, or inventing new ones, to 

 add to his forces and to lessen the expense of his efforts ! Is not 

 this an object as important as magnetism, optics, or astronomy? 

 Or rather is it not so infinitely superior as to leave a comparison 

 absurd? Where am I to travel to find agricultural establish- 

 ments on a scale that shall not move contempt ? If I find none 

 such in the dominions of a prince reputed the wisest in Europe, 

 where am I to go for them ? Our Annual Register gave such an 

 account a few years past of the new regulations of the Grand 

 Duke in relation to burials that I have been anxious to know the 

 truth by such inquiries on all hands as would give me not the 

 letter of the law only, but the practice of it. The fact in the 

 above-mentioned publication was exaggerated. The bodies of 

 all who die in a day are carried in the night on a bier in a linen 

 covering (and not tumbled naked into a common cart) to the 

 church, but without any lights or singing; there they receive 

 benediction; thence they are moved to a house prepared on 

 purpose, where the bodies are laid covered on a marble platform, 

 and a voiture made for that use removes them to the cemetery 

 at a distance from the city, where they are buried without dis- 

 tinction, very deep, not more than two in a grave, but no coffins 

 used. All persons of whatever rank are bound to submit to 

 this law, except the archbishop and women of religious orders. 

 This is the regulation and the practice ; and I shall freely say that 

 I condemn it as an outrage on the common feelings of mankind ; 

 chiefly because it is an unnecessary outrage, from which no use 

 whatever flows. To prohibit light^, singing, processions, and 

 mummery of that sort was rational; but are not individuals to 

 dress and incase the dead bodies in whatever manner they please ? 

 Why are they not permitted to send them, if they choose, pri- 

 vately into the country to some other burying place, where they 

 may rest ^^^th fathers, mothers, and other connections? Pre- 

 judices bearing on this point may be, if you please, ridiculous; 

 but gratifying them, though certainly of no benefit to the dead, 

 is, however, a consolation to the living at a moment when consola- 



