Burning the Dead. 21 



cremation for many years to come, but I think it will be 

 adopted as an almost necessary part of sanitary ordinances. 

 T do not claim to be original in having now suggested its 

 revival. Professor Polli, of Milan, has lately been strongly 

 advocating its resumption, and, in England, its desirability 

 has latterly been discussed with emphatic approval by 

 several leading social reformers. At Hamburg, I learn that 

 a club has been formed, which is steadily increasing in 

 numbers, the members of which, on entering, make a will, 

 ordering that at their death their remains shall be burned. 

 There is an additional argument in favour of its adoption 

 in the old country, in that grave-yards and cemeteries 

 frequently occupy valuable ground which could be put to 

 much more rational use than to serve as pits of putrefactive 

 foulness. This reason does not so strongly declare itself in 

 Australia, because we might bury our dead in the far 

 interior, where population is not likely to extend for the 

 next century. The only objection would be the expense ; 

 and on this point I may take occasion to say that the 

 burning process would, of necessity, be much more econo- 

 mical than any other. I think the useless display frequently 

 made at funerals, for which it is as difficult to account 

 as it is apparently impossible by any sort of reasoning to 

 counteract, is of many unwise customs one of the most 

 unwise. This habit of lavish outlay at funerals, is probably 

 a part of the present system of inhumation, and the revival 

 of cremation might bring with it a simpler, and less costly 

 form of obsequies. The objection to the revival of the 

 process of cremation is, I have no doubt, principally of 

 a sentimental kind. There are attached to the dead a 

 solemnity and a sacredness, which every one almost instinc- 

 tively confesses, and few things are resented more keenly 

 than any outrage offered to the remains of those whom in 

 life we have loved. This is a feeling which I should be 

 most unwilling to disturb. It is part of the poetry of our 

 nature to visit the tombs of the departed, and to think of 

 them as we knew them in the flesh. This sacredness of the 

 dead has manifested itself at different ages and in different 

 countries, often in curious forms. The Egyptians, as we 

 know, went to great pains and expense in embalming their 

 dead. The Scythians, like some of our aboriginals, made 

 their graves on platforms above the earth. The Icthyophagi, 

 according to that quaint authority, Sir Thomas Browne, 

 consigned their dead to the sea, in exchange for the fish 



