36 CREMATION. 



solely as a preventive measure of a sanitary nature that burning the 

 dead, in the opinion of so many, ah-eady calls for serious consideration; 

 and in the hope that the subject will be received by this influential 

 Society as one worthy of debate, I have ventured to bring it before 

 you, that your thoughts may, as Matthew Arnold says, " play freely 

 round it," untrammelled by prejudices unworthy of philosophers. 



