Hic in cœmeterio condi voluit,
Ne templum dehonestaret
Aut nocivis halitibus inficeret.”
[32]. Perpetuities in burial grounds may be said to have been declared illegal by Lord Stowell’s decision in the case of Gilbert v. the Churchwardens of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, on the use of iron coffins. His lordship, in his judgment in that case, remarked, that “All contrivances that, whether intentionally or not, prolong the time of dissolution beyond the period at which the common local understanding and usage have fixed it, is an act of injustice, unless compensated in some other way.”—Haggard’s Rep. v. 2, p. 353. Vide statement of the principle of this decision, in the extracts from the judgment given in the Appendix, No. 12.
[33]. The neglect of the cemeteries at Paris, and especially of those portions dedicated to the interment of the poorer classes, has been the subject of public complaint, and means are now being taken to redress them. A friend, who aided me with some inquiries in respect to them, states,—
The English tourist in visiting Père la Chaise is attracted by splendid monuments in the midst of cypress trees, and little gardens filled with flowers planted round a majority of the tombs; but the graves of the humbler classes lie beyond these, and to them the stranger is seldom conducted. The contrast is painful. When I last visited Père la Chaise, on a fine day in November, and after a week of unusually fine weather for the season, I found the paths quite impracticable in the poorer quarter of the cemetery, and as I watched a man, in the usual blouse dress worn by the working class, picking his way through the mud to lead his little boy to pray over the grave of his mother, I could but deplore the economy of an administration which had neglected to provide, at least, a dry gravel path for the humble and pious mourner.
[34]. Vide Appendix for an exemplification of the excess of deaths and funerals, and other losses incurred by setting aside Sir Christopher Wren’s plan for the rebuilding of the city of London.
[35]. One of the twelve tables was in these words, “Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito neve urito.” Cicero, in one of his epistles, Epist. ad Div. iv. 12, in which he describes the assassination of his friend M. Marcellus, at Athens, mentions that he had been unable to obtain permission of the Athenians that the body should be buried in the city; they said that such permission was inadmissible on religious grounds, and that it never had been granted to any one.
[36]. Bingham’s Christian Antiquities, b. xxiii. ch. 1, s. 2.
[37]. Vide Leviticus, chap. xiv., verse 33 to 48, for early sanitary measures of purification.