[20] Friends in Council.
[21] ‘By the working of the apparatus for the administration of justice, they make their profits; and their welfare depends on its being so worked as to bring them profits, rather than on its being so worked as to administer justice.’—Herbert Spencer.
[22] Lockhart’s Life of Scott.
[23] Sir T. Browne.
[24] Deut. xxxiv. 6.
[25] Tennyson’s In Memoriam.
[26] Dei Sepolchri, di Ugo Foscolo.
[27] A recent advocate for cremation thus suggests the process:—‘On a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a convenient, well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple. At the entrance, where some of the mourners might prefer to take leave of the body, are chambers for their accommodation. Within the edifice are seats for those who follow the remains to the last; there is also an organ and a gallery for choristers. In the centre of the chapel, embellished with appropriate emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble, somewhat like those which cover the ashes of the great and mighty in our old cathedrals, the openings being filled with prepared glass. Within this—a sufficient space intervening—is an inner shrine, covered with bright, non-radiating metal, and within this again is a covered sarcophagus of tempered fire-clay, with one or more longitudinal slits near the top, extending its whole length. As soon as the body is deposited therein, sheets of flame, at an immensely high temperature, rush through the long apertures from end to end; and acting as a combination of a modified oxyhydrogen blowpipe, with the reverberatory furnace, utterly and completely consume and decompose the body in an incredibly short space of time; even the large quantity of water it contains is decomposed by the extreme heat, and its elements, instead of retarding, aid combustion, as is the case in fierce conflagrations. The gaseous products of combustion are conveyed away by flues, and means being adopted to consume anything like smoke, all that is observed from the outside is occasionally a quivering transparent ether floating away from the high steeple to mingle with the atmosphere.’
[28] ‘How can we reconcile this pious and faithful remembrance with the character of a nation generally thought so frivolous and inconstant? Let this amiable, affectionate, but slandered people send the stranger and the traveller to this place. These carefully tended flowers, these tombs, will speak their defence.’—Memoir of Harriet Preble, p. 70.
[29] Atlantic Monthly, vol. ii., p. 139.