REVIEW. 
43 
How many millions of dead bodies will be burnt then? And on looking 
back, — independently of the host of martyrs whose bodies perished in the 
flames, — have not thousands of Christians of all denominations been burnt 
in one way or the other ?” 
He next proceeds to urge its adoption so that the sad 
occurrence may not take place of burying persons when only 
in a trance ; the communication of the heat being sufficient 
to arouse them from this, or, if not, the awfully painful death 
by suffocation in the coffin when under the earth will be 
prevented. 
He then observes — 
“ It has been suggested to me, that if facilities were afforded for burning 
a body, it might be an incentive to the crime of murder, as a chief evidence 
of guilt would be destroyed. This could only apply to those cases where 
no external sign of violence is apparent, or where no shadow of a suspicion 
of foul play exists, — and these cases are comparatively rare — so, happily, is 
murder the rarest of all great crimes. But were cremation adopted, greater 
attention to the proper registration of the cause of death should be impera- 
tively called for ; and this of itself would prove more of a check to crime, 
than the poor chance of disposing of a murdered body would, be an en- 
couragement.” 
The question is then argued as a sanitary measure. The 
following stood first on the table of the old Roman laws, 
which treated of funerals and their management. “ Let no dead 
body he luried or burned within the city” A wise injunction, 
which only of late years, and hardly that, yet we have been 
sagacious enough to enforce. The dead have doubtless slain 
their thousands. Yet what an outcry has been raised against 
closing the burial-grounds in town! The statements 
advanced by our author in proof of the evil that resulted from 
intra-mural interments, these being all collected from official 
documents, are startling. This, we need scarcely add, arose 
from the mephitic gases generated by the decomposition of 
the bodies, and which it was impossible to confine, since even 
leaden coffins were often burst by them. Nor does it appear 
that public cemeteries will obviate the evil : at least they will 
only do so in degree, and for a time. It must, however, be 
conceded that there is this advantage possessed by them, — 
plants, trees, &c., being allowed to grow among the tombs, 
exercise a purifying influence over the atmosphere. Yet may 
the bodies in the course of time become too numerous. For — 
