rinks, take the lead, and are each by turn discussed and fought over, affirmed, denied, till one becomes quite sick of the very phraseology in which the great topic is wrapped. And, precisely as this process goes on from month to month under our eyes and in our ears, so it seems to have gone on from age to age in the history of mankind. Waves of fussy talk seem to roll up at intervals on a scale greater or smaller according to the subject-matter, and, after a period, culminate and break, and fall back whence they came, to lie, it may be for years, even for centuries, in comparative obscurity, till a new combination brings them up again. When every soul having the power of speech in this vast metropolis had asked his fellow, "Have you seen the Shah?" that potentate subsided and disappeared from talk for an indefinite time, but not till then. And so, in some measure, has it happened to cremation. The cremation talk has certainly passed its apogee, and it may be fairly said that it is now possible to dine out without hearing any explicit reference to what the French call the cinders of one's forefathers. It would, perhaps, appear therefore gratuitous to entertain our readers with any remarks on a subject for the present, it may be hoped, in spite of ardent advocacy, not to be ranked among the questions brûlantes of the hour, were it not that it is one which seems to have a special history and a special significance regarding the Catholic belief and practice on the disposal of the dead. "There is nothing new under the sun," and neither the fact nor the theory of cremation is new. Let us, then, attempt to trace the order of causes which gave rise to them, and after (it may be said) a total abolition of both the theory and practice in civilized lands, have in these latter times made some not entirely unsuccessful attempt to revive the practice, and rehabilitate the theory on which it rests. 1. What is the history of cremation, or the burning of the dead bodies of men? There can be little doubt that the primeval custom of all mankind was to bury the bodies of the dead in that earth from which, as we Christians know, the Creator compacted them when He made our first parent from the slime of the earth, and breathed into him the breath of life and the reasonable soul, which is man's difference from all other created beings on this earth. In the Old Testament there is no trace of any other mode of sepulture, whether among God's people under the primeval, the patriarchal, or the Mosaic dispensation. The burning of the bones of the dead occurs once and again, indeed, but it is as exhumed, in * 3 Kings xiii. 24; Kings xxiii. 6; Ezek. xxiv. 10. order to defile and degrade the schismatical altar of Jeroboam, by the express word of prophecy, and the fulfilment of it by the righteous king Josias. And so in the oldest secular records which we have, inhumation figures as the universal practice. Egypt knew of no other method. Assyria and Persia the same. Meshech and Tubal, the present Muscovy and Siberia, Edom and the Sidonians, every monument of all races from Egypt to the extreme Scandinavians, from Hindustan to Mexico, testify to the truth which we may sum up in the words of Isaias. When contrasting the repose of all other great ones in the quiet of their stately tombs with the unburied remains of the king of Babylon, who had exalted himself, and claimed to raise his throne above the dominion of the Most High, he says, "All the kings of the nations, all of them, lie in glory; every one in his own sepulchre; but thou art cast out of thy grave, like to an abominable branch; like the raiment of the slain thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit. As a carcase that is trodden under feet, thou shalt not be joined with them in burial."* The extreme reverence with which the Jews regarded their dead, and the jealous care, degenerating into a motive of superstition and a mark of hypocrisy, as our Lord more than once intimates, with which they adorned and watched over their sepulchres, is notorious, and as it was not the subject of positive precepts in the law of Moses except indirectly in the prescriptions to bury without the camp or dwelling-place of the people, and for the purification of the living after they had touched the bodies of the dead, we must be certain that their practice was an exact representation of the primeval traditions of our race in this regard. But if proof is required of this evident truth, it may be found in the corroborative testimony of the most conservative races. The Chinese, says Amyot, from earliest times have buried their dead. And Robertson says that the Peruvians and other primeval races of Central America from the earliest times buried and embalmed their rulers and chief people. Similarly Cicero ("De Legibus," bk. xi. par. 23 and 25) says, "ut mihi quidem antiquissimum sepulturæ genus videtur quo apud Xenophontem Cyrus utitur. Redditur enim corpus terræ," &c.; and of the Greeks, "Nam et Athenis jam ille nos a Cecrope, ut aiunt, permansit, hoc jus terra humandi." So also the Etruscans, Dempster, ("De Etruria Regali," Flor. 1723, in the addition by Bonarota, par. 26,)" antiquissimis temporibus Etruscis in usu fuit, more vetustissimo et apud plerasque gentes recepto, integra corpora *Isaias xiv. 18. mortuorum in cryptis tumulandi." The Egyptians surrounded the burial of the dead with every circumstance of solemnity and affectionate reverence. After the embalming, the body was placed in a kind of open chest, which was preserved within their houses, or in the sepulchres which still cover so large a portion of that wondrous land. But before they were quietly inurned" in the tomb they underwent a solemn pronouncement of judgment, of which Diodorus Siculus gives the following most singular account in the first book of his history-a compilation, as all know, from works of a far higher antiquity. Those who prepare to bury a deceased friend give notice of the day intended for the ceremony to the judges and to all the friends of the deceased, who assemble on the further side of the lake nearest to the abode of the deceased. The vessel (managed by a pilot, called in Egyptian Charon, which means the fierce-eyed) being launched, before the coffin is embarked the law permits all who are so inclined to make an accusation against the dead. If any one appears and proves that the deceased has led an evil life, the judges pronounce sentence, and the body is precluded from burial; but if the accuser is convicted of a false charge he falls himself under a heavy penalty. The kings themselves were subject to this ordeal, and Diodorus says that many had failed, and been deprived of burial by the indignation of the people; and that the fear of such a result had a salutary effect on the conduct of their sovereigns. The Greeks had the custom of placing a piece of money in the mouth of the dead, as Charon's fare for helping the soul across the sad and dismal Styx, and by his side the cake to appease the watchful Cerberus; and whilst the body remained unburied a bowl of water stood ready, that those who touched the dead might wash off the pollution contracted by the contact. After the mourning and the interment, the περιδεῖπνον, οι νεκροδεῖπνον (feast of the dead), took place, at which his friends appeared, crowned as at festivals. The Athenians buried their soldiers with special honours. Three days they lay in state in their tents; on the fourth a coffin was sent from every tribe for the bodies of each of their kin, and after these in the funeral procession came an empty covered hearse representing those whose bodies could not be found. All, accompanied by a concourse of people, were carried forth to the cemetery, called Cerameicos, and there interred with an oration and the usual rites. was the ancient, and remained the usual practice in Greece. The burning of the dead on a funeral pyre, which was lit by the nearest of kin, while the bystanders called on the dead and poured out libations of wine, was, as a general practice, This more recent, and never universal. The Romans had very many and significant funeral rites. Those of wealthy and eminent persons were protracted for seven days, during which the body lay in state, washed and anointed. Three times at intervals the conclamationes took place, the relatives and friends shouting in order to rouse him, in case the departed should be merely in a trance. Then took place the interment. The usual practice for the rich was cremation on a funeral pyre, but the burials, whether by burning or inhumation, were expressly forbidden to be within the walls by a law of the twelve tables. Exceptions were made, however, in favour of public men. Plutarch says those who had had triumphs decreed to them were entitled to this distinction. Valerius Publicola and Caius Fabricius had tombs in the Forum; and Cicero adds, that Tubertus had the same honour. Besides the motive of health (which would indicate rather the practice of inhumation than that of cremation), we are told that extramural interment was practised by the ancients, because of the general belief that the touch, sight, or even near neighbourhood, of a corpse polluted a man: whence the rule mentioned by Aulus Gellius that the flamen dialis might not enter a place where there was a grave: an extraordinary trace of the traditions of the Jewish law, as it seems to us. It was customary with the Romans when they saw a corpse not yet interred, to cast three handfuls of earth on the body, of which one at least on the head. It is to this custom that Horace alludes in that beautiful ode on the death of Archytas (the xxviii. of the 1st Book), in which he bids the mariner who finds his body cast up by the cruel waves on the Tarentine shore not omit and again "arenæ Ossibus et capiti inhumato "Quanquam festinas, non est mora longa, licebit The "caput inhumatum" of the philosopher requires the scattering of the earth, as the whole context shows, to satisfy the requirements of that belief, which in the minds of all unsophisticated men conceives that the immortal spirit, now set free from the flesh, can surely hardly rest until its frail sometime companion has mingled once more with the mother earth from which it took its origin, and so fulfilled the stadium of this mortal life, as in like manner the soul can rest alone by returning to the God who gave it. In Horace's time the simplicity of the commonwealth, so often praised by him, had receded in the matter of funeral rites as well as in every other particular of domestic and public life; and the law had striven in vain, by sumptuary enactments, to check the wanton pomp which heaped up the funeral pyres of the great with every kind of rich offering a homage more often rendered by living vanity to itself than by affection or reverence to the departed worth of those whom they thus professed to honour. If the old traditions of Rome in its great days of strength and virtue kept positively to practices denoting primeval beliefs regarding the dead, they were little less marked by the stern refusal to inter the bodies of certain categories of persons whom they considered reprobate, with those sacred and expiatory rites, which the Romans would have considered profaned by such a use. The traitor, the fraudulent debtor, and some say the suicide, had no right to the funeral rites, and, on the other hand, it was considered impious to burn those struck by lightning, whom our coroners' verdicts still (with ancestral piety) describe as dying "by the visitation of God." Such were always interred, and the bidental altar marked and hallowed the spot. So again, when the little child died in its innocence, the pyre and the libation were unneeded, and were deemed profane. No doubt here will occur to most minds the frequent funeral pyres of Homer, of Virgil, and of so many more. We will not go the length of saying that these were altogether "poetry," and that we might as well take them for historic evidence of the prevalence of cremation as the torches and vases which decorate so many gorgeous (and hideous) monuments of the last and present century in our own churches, and which, whatever other significance they may have, certainly do not mean that the respectable noble lords, ladies, squires, and squiresses, who sleep beneath their ponderous protection were burnt, and their ashes potted for posterity. But at least it is evident that the function of the poet, and especially of the epic poet, is not so well discharged by the quiet grave-side as amidst the striking incidents of the flaming pyre, heaped with the spoils of vanquished foes, or glittering with the wealth of the surviving heir who mounts with faltering step and averted face to set his torch to the beloved remains. Our posterity would scarcely be warranted in believing that the weddings at St. George's, Hanover Square, recorded so glowingly in the columns of the "Morning Post," were really celebrated by a heathen flamen, accompanied by a young and sentimental pig, although the poetic author of these true narratives declares persistently that Lord Tom really did lead Lady Jane to the altar of Hymen on each |