THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
27 
Sanitary Sepulture. 
The science of chemistry has given us a knowl- 
edge of the dangers to which our ancestors exposed 
themselves when interring their dead beneath their 
churches or in the grounds immediately surround- 
ing them says a writer in the Independent ; 
“When land grew scarce in London the graves 
were opened and used over and over again, till in 
some of them thesurface was raised to a level with the 
church windows. With the progress of science men 
began to discern that the dead could exercise a most 
deleterious influence over the living. Early in this 
century the subject attracted the attention of 
thoughtful men, among them Sir Edwin Chadwick, 
and in 1843 he made a report to Parliament on the 
enormous number of burials taking place in London 
annually; and he never remitted his efforts, till in 
the burial actofi855) intramural interments were 
finally forbidden. While it is an easy matter to 
discover and point out evils, it is quite another af- 
fair to devise and supply remedies. After the pas- 
sage of the act, the next step was to provide some 
other place which should be equally desirable in 
the eyes of surviving relatives. It took many years 
to win the victory that forbade further interments 
within the city limits; and when one sees a funeral 
group committing a body to the earth in Trinity 
church-yard in New York city, one wishes that the 
English law could, for the nonce, stretch across the 
Atlantic, for certainly there are already sources 
enough of pollution in that crowded vicinity. 
The burial act led to the establishment of cem- 
eteries in England, and the agitation of the subject 
there led to early and vigorous action here. Sci- 
entific and sanitary considerations caused trees and 
shrubbery to be planted. The scientific theory on 
which the planting proceeded was that the vegeta- 
tion would necessarily absorb the carbonic acid and 
other gases generated by bodily decay. 
In London it had been proved that shallow wells 
in the vicinity of grave-yards were polluted by the 
drainage from them, and the general awakening on 
the matter of pure water supply caused them to be 
closed, and then the question was asked: Cannot 
these old, disused burial places be made of use to 
the living? and now they have been converted into 
pleasant parks and playgrounds, till there are no 
less than 173 of these breathing places within the 
city, and of course these places have long ago be- 
come perfectly harmless to the living. Seymour 
. Haden, an experienced medical man, as well as 
a charming artist, in a paper read before the Liver- 
pool medical institution defines what he and the 
other burial-reform champions consider perfectly 
sanitary sepulture — that is to say, burial in an easi- 
ly perishable envelope. He says a body buried in 
such a .way that the earth may have access to it, 
does not remain in the earth, but returns to the at- 
mosphere. Suppose a body buried three or four 
feet below the surface, the earth as earth affects it 
in no way whatever. The part played by the earth 
in its resolution is that of a mere porous medium 
between it and the air that is above it. Through 
this medium the air with its dews and its rain fil- 
ters, and when it reaches the body oxidizes it — that 
is to say, resolves it into new and harmless products; 
and then these new products passing upward again, 
through the same sieve-like medium, re-enter the 
atmosphere and become the elements of its renew- 
al, and of the nourishment and growth of plants. 
The body, in fact, literally, as well as figuratively, 
ascends from the dead, and fulfils the cycle of its 
pilgrimage by becoming again the source and re- 
newal of life. 
Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Mo. 
On my way to Calvary, the large and widely 
known Catholic Cemetery of St. Louis, I tried to 
recall the impressions of a previous visit, made some 
twelve or fifteen years before, and found them to be: 
outside; a high, shaky and dishevelled picket fence: 
inside; dense shade, deep ravines, and an impene- 
trable wilderness of stones. 
Returning after so long an interval striking al- 
terations are observable, but enough remains of the 
former conditions to make the old impressions part- 
ly those of to-day, especially in one direction — the 
stones are still there. Indeed in some parts of the 
grounds they have increased and multiplied marvel- 
ously. 
Head stones, foot-stones, corner-stones, coping- 
stones, stones as gate posts where there are no gates, 
at the head of flights of stone steps, often where no 
steps are needed. 
Other changes are all in the line of improve- 
ments, most of which are marked, and of a charac- 
ter that places the cemetery in the front rank of 
those leading the modern movement that will result 
in the universal establishment of tasteful homes for 
the dead — an evidence of civilization as essential as 
tasteful homes for the living, and as sure in time to 
be the rule rather than the exception. 
If interior decoration followed in the wake of 
the Centennial, surely exterior decoration may be 
expected as part of the outcome of the World’s Fair. 
The present superintendent of Calvary, Mr. 
Matthew P. Brazill, who has been in charge of the 
cemetery about ten years, is a progressive man. He 
has had the taste and perception to catch the mod- 
ern idea in cemetery matters, and is not only in 
touch with the good work that is being done here 
and there in the United States, but as far as possi- 
