330 Retrospective Criticism. 



do a variety of jobs in bell-ropes and things of that kind, would run very 

 rusty were any plan of laying out a sixpence upon the churchyard proposed. 

 I am a churchwarden, and, after doing all I can for the decent support and 

 maintenance of the fabric of the church, fight desperate battles with the 

 churchmen in resisting their unwarrantable claims to fees at visitations. I 

 believe these fees are illegal, and cannot be enforced ; but I am threatened 

 with all sorts of spiritual punishments, excommunication, and what not, to all 

 of which I am perfectly indifferent. But were the moneys now demanded as 

 visitation fees laid out in improving churchyards, there would be sufficient to 

 keep them in very high order. We want a reform in these matters more than 

 in any other. There are popular prejudices with regard to interments which 

 have to be overcome, and which are generally more durable than any other 

 impressions, as they are founded on religious superstition ; just as Sir G. 

 Wilkinson tells us that the incision in mummies was always performed with a 

 flint, long after the introduction of iron as an instrument, because the system 

 originated before the use of metals. The Cornelian family at Rome kept up 

 the custom of interring the dead entire, long after the practice of cremation. 

 Sylla was the first of his race who ordered his body to be burned. In the 

 same way our peasants, although immensely attached to their churchyards, are 

 averse to alterations, such as planting trees. We had some limes planted in 

 our churchyard many years ago, v/hich, for a time, gave great offence. The 

 grand assemblage of trees in a necropolis of the extent you contemplate would 

 produce a noble effect. Allan Cunningham wished, naturally enough, to 

 repose where daisies grew ; and another poet (Moore) describes the wish of 

 the friends of the departed, to 



" make her a grave where the simbemns rest. 



When they promise a glorious morrow." 

 To a lover of the vegetable world, a desire to repose amid o. forest ofvmidus 

 trees is the most consonant to his pursuits and feelings. Hitherto we have 

 been contented in England with the yew, as the southern nations were with the 

 cypress, which alone Horace permits to follow us to the grave : 



" Neque harum, quas colis, arborum 



Te, prcBter invisas cupressus, 



UUa brevem dominum sequetur." 



" The cypress only, hated tree, 



Of all thy much-loved groves, shall thee 



Its short-lived lord attend." Francis's trans. 



But enough for the present. — H. A. M. May 3. 1843. 



Preservation of Fruits. — After what I sent you in my last letter [see 

 p. 18G.], I know not what there is of novelty in the method of preserving fruits 

 by M. Loiseleur Deslongchamps so much lauded in the French journals, and 

 announced in {he Memorial Encyclopedique for 1838, p. 420., in these terms: — 

 " The Royal Society of Horticulture formerly proposed a prize for the preserv- 

 ation of fruits ; the question has been completely resolved by M. Loiseleur 

 Deslongcliamps, who has decided that it is necessary to have recourse to arti- 

 ficial cold to retard the maturation of fruits and to render it stationary, and to 

 whom a gold medal has been awarded in consequence at the general meeting 

 of the 3d of June, 1838. His simple and inexpensive method, which consists 

 in keeping the fruit well enclosed and protected from moisture, and at an equal 

 temperature a little above that of melting ice, might have been made a very 

 advantageous speculation for the inventor ; but this learned agriculturist pre- 

 ferred giving gratuitously to the public a process which will no doubt become 

 the basis of a new species of industry. M. Loiseleur Deslongchamps had 

 boxes made of zinc 1 ft. high and 6 in. broad, with a detached lid of the same 

 metal with a projecting rim. He wrapped each of his pears in a piece of thin (?) 

 paper (papier Joseph), and over that another cover of common brown paper ; 

 the pears being thus enveloped, he placed them in layers in his boxes till they 



