The Express.
London, England, 1850-04-22 00:00:00

THE FXPRESS, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 22, 1850.

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.—No. L

Ica 1849, London dose supplied 16,000 additional
witaimes—asoonaeiose. bat most vermin. witnesses
—to the mortal abousisatioa of Lowden churchyards.
From Loudon graves, sixteen extra thousands reeked
their testlinoey in unmistakeable gases to the
anseents.aceording t. the arithmatie of Dr. Playfair,
.0(2,671,600 cable feet ; the whole of which, " be-
yond what is absorbed by the'soil, slut pass Into the
water below or thi atmosphere above." Thus the
poison is dqubly reoenupemded be our senses :
Distend alike io air and water. Bat for a fall anti
particular aceenntof all the evils, the ghastly shows,
the brutalising indeesneith et the English gave
even, at the bests wilkUlt,tbe promised secant's the
sang exclusiveness of the church vault, and
the defying, durability of • leaden coffin,
most critically aoldered,—we refer the reader
to the " Report as a General Scheme for
Extramural Sepulture,* just issued 'by the Genial
Booed of. Health. We , have shuddered through its
mimesis details, and cannot but acknowledge a note
of hYpooritie mockery in the phrase " Christian
burial," ea fse the most part performed—hideously
barlsequed--ie Christian England. Rich and poor
are alike and by tunic made. the nuisacos aid the
wrong. A ride man is buried with all funereal
honours. The plucked ostrich yields its black-dyed
feathers topsoils the good name's last : he goes plumed
to the vault in two °offing; undisturbed, hermetically
. secure in his lead—a most eonsciectious and artistic
bit of plumb-work; and there—the funersl bill and
church does paid, undertaker and tectw alike
placid and content—then the good man, head-
somely bestowed, awaits the resurrection " which is
the fife of the grave end sweetens our habitations in
the land of moles sod piemires.' Such the tran-
quillity anticipated by the dying: such the fancied
' repose, purchased by survivors and further solemnised
by a stamp receipt I 'Alas! for the pride of lead, and
the vanity of the vault. Dxtor Waller Lewis reports
his charnel experience is many churches; taking note
of the ruthless, and if the dead can be cheated, the
dishonest manner in which a corpse that has hand-
somely paid it. way in the land of caresses, is
crushed, flattened into hideous insignificsece, by the
new-comers from time to time put above it—by the
new arrivals of leaden caskets piled, with a most
mercenary eye to business, one upon another.
Doc'or Lewis is in the vault of St. Andrew Under-
shaft. " A coffin and its contents," says the Doctor,
" frequen'ly weigh three or four hundred weight; and
as many as thirteen of these are sometimes heaped
together in one column." Sorely, this is a little hard
upon the undermost? Why, yee, for "the lower
coffins were driven into the ground, and pressed quite
fiat." There is, however, the strongest social reason
for this—the reason of the breeches pocket. Every
Baffin so piled in a vault, in the philosophical and
arithmetical oonviction of a sexton of S.. Andrew Un-
dershaft, is " worth a good five-pound note." A dreary
thought this; yet very illustrative of the oil truth
that different minds see the species of different thing.
in the same object ; the friends of the deceased with
tearful eyes read in the coffin-piste the beloved name
of the dead ; the sexton, with deeper vision, decyphere
in the same marks the hidden meaning that is to him
—" a good five-pound note!"
Were further burial in church vaults to be 1. gall
permitted, surely, in the fulness of time—though
when, it would he hardihood to prophesy—even the
better-instructed consciences of the well-to-do genera-
tion, with pockets fur ecclesiastical lying and the dear
immunity of plumber's work, would sicken and re-
' volt at the notion of becoming a nuisance and •
danger to 'heir own living flesh ot the second and
third generation, Sabbatically called together in the
old family pew. Men, better taught, would outlive
the filthy conceit of wishing to fermrut in the security
of lead, after a time to evolve carbonic acid gas
and other foulest emanatioos pestilential to the
living. A man would feel himself a shabby, dastardly
fellow, who should desire to bequeath his carcase as
a mischievous legacy to the living.
A sense of decency, a humble acknowledgment of
the common fiat that says dust to dust, would make a
men ashamed of the ghastly foppery that, in church
vaults, juggles him with the notion of a place apart—
rockers his spirit with the thought ot privil.ge for
individual rottenness. For at the best the retirement
of the coffin is now broken in upon : the exclusive-
ness is only a matter of years. Pay what yon will,
time hustles your bones with the bones of strangers;
pili s them up with alien relics—a confusion ocrtaioly
not to be thought of when the pomp of the funeral is
determined upon, and a chosen place in the vault se-
cured. Man, in his vanity, pays as he thinks for
tenant right until the last day. Alas! he is only the
sexton's other five-pound note—a note for time to
change into gas and dust. Dr. Lewis is in the vault
of St. :
Here are plated 117020 hundred and fifty enfilni, is all
onesible positi me, piled one above another-4e lower crushed
by the so ..ight of dole above. The great majority are broken
and decayed—:ha remains of mortality falling out between
the rows of cAllas. Is all but the newest coffins the external
wood is decayed, leaving the lead exposed. It is, of course,
impassible in these ins sects to ascertain whose remains they
contain. &torsos% cobwebs and lanai, with much dirt
and filth, rendtr the it scriptions that remain illegible. Many
of the coffins cousin of a mere shell of decayed wood, which,
on the slightest touch, breaks into powder, and exposes the
remains of the skeleton. The coffins are so fragile, and the
yllu so much out of the perpendicular, that it is dangerous
to approach very near them. In the two farther corners
large colketions of base me piled together without any
attempt at order or deceeey—a most revolting sight.
That cobwebs and fungi should make illegible the
words of coffin-plates is a sad yet significant triumph
achieved over the vanity of the vault. And to be
crashed out of one', coffin, and then to be picked up
bone by bone, and toned into a earner wi-h a multi-
tude of bones, heaped with no more "attempt at
order or decency "—what order would satisfy Doctor
Lewis ?—than a heap of shingle, all this should be a
victorious reproof of the worse than vanity that makes
man hope to cheat the grave to whose consumption
he is due. Is it not more pleasant to think our bones
transmuted into grass, or gone to feed the pith of yew
and cypress, than flung into a foal dark corner with a
mob of bones—the said mob showing no " attempt at
older or decency " ?
. _ _

When the cotse cannot, or will not, afford, what
an old poet cal " a fold of lead "—when the b-ely
takes its plass in the vault in simple elm, it tikes
with it, supplied by the undertaker, a thousand diein-
tarring agents that will surely undo the undertaker's
work ; passing that " stout, handsome elm coffin"
inexorably through their intestines, in a dark brown
powder; and doubtless consanin the funereal wood,
with as mach gusto as the undertaker's men—the
funeral performed—displayed to the familiar waiter
of the Bag-o'-Nails, in the customary consumption of
gin and 'Woo. This resurrectionist insect is called
the .Rhynoolus Ligttarists, or Weevil of the Elm :
It is a dark, iiiesose-colommi West (ems Dr. Lewis),
'bottom-sixth of an huh is length, net isafrequeat in the
vicinity of the metropolis, sad emptared generally Muth
the bark of else. From the ern monist of bark'
thus crest/use are at Mk in the larva state.
With plenty of food. and wain the famarable con-
ditions of damp and quiet, with abeam of their
etudes, the weevils propagate namerass generations, which
feed, tandem the speedasjeesaidodie et only when the vege-
table fibre is completely l ed. The wood then, drilled
with holes, dry and rotten, 'Baader, and leaves that
heap of !sewn dust of @kapok*, soiseake, whose composi-
tion (Ins it Is ay longer wood) Moms a 'Minkel, not a to-
tankial problem.
In this manner is the defrauded corpse eaten out of
its elm case or crib by rhyncoime ligtearigu. Did the
vanity of man exact new coffins like new coats, what
a profitable insect to the undertaker would be the elm
insect! Its ravages, however, are to be stayed by ven-
tilation. Bat, the passing victory over rhyncolue
lignarius is dearly purchased; for, as Doctor Lewis
convincingly observes, " where s vault is only kept
pure by thorough ventilation, the surrounding atmo-
sphere mast have been poisoned by receiving the im-
purities from the vault." Thus, it is hardly to be
contested, it is better, in a sanitary sense, to suffer
rhyneoless lignarius to make its quiet meal, digesting
handsome elm coffins into brown dust, than to stay it
at the cost of charnel gases—deadly whiffs from the
jaws of death, ?dosing up the nostril. and down the
lungs of the living.
In many churches the entrance to the vaults is in the body
of the church, the atmosphere of which suet receive an
irruption of poisonous gases sash time that the vaults are
I opened. Thus in Si. Bsset'., Orsoschurah, five flagstones
have to be raised from the able, aboat a foot depth of soil is
then removed sad thrown Into the body of the church, and
lastly a trap door Mused, and this forms the entrants Into
the vault. Besides this tires communication with the kite-
Hu of the church, a great may other bodies are boned in
the soil undtr the flagstones of all parts of the church.

St. Benet% Oraeseburch, must be considered, of
all metropolitan churches, a most solemn place of
worship; a place, in which all the vanities of life
should be held of least account, seeing that their
tennis is made so uncertain by the means of death
that rise from the vaults, and the soil beneath the

church... "by natural exhalation." The congrega-
tion of St. Banithp Otaceabarch, may be maid, ono.
a week, at tisk, to affront death ; men as soldier.
and sailor. me maid to affront him. To go to prayers
at Bt. Benet% la almost as eponymous as to go into
a general action. Game are no 10.. mortal Mangan.;
and crashed leaden soaks quite a. dangaroas—we
hasten to proof as leaden bullets.
0031/1101/11111 amid orstale *aide coatalaed la the lead
s • glued, mama. wears they NM la mate* wits
tide metal she adder. • eorrodisi salmi thee awe* the
Wed lodeolrectcad a Teat le spode thrash shish„ the
&Me she Mr I tat I ems • ammo mat 54th., a
eathiediated sees a wee bowies from thi prow eltiti
poem bide *this. Geserally speak* Owes la ewe
of dropsy, either °sly a limited gestalt, et gams Wormed,
or the wean Saws estabiao to form wales, ateneniel Or
ether tehessaose with* form solids with the load.
But Doctor Lewis is not prepared to may, di That
lead may not filter a pearap " to certain 15..., and
reform it to gloat oft scncsr body. Hat the unshorn of
piling iodic upon oofiln—thme precious layara of flee
pound nix*, maxtoit currency--crusbas
most, ell crashing, cruahing, until the last Sre.
pound note can be insinuated next S. the roof r and
hence ttiri inertld pia set tree from the' beam had.
And them, it mama, are from time to time la (Spacial
form among the
.eourageoes °myna* of St-
Beriet's Graceolturoh .

Thu mush for the peril to physical health from
church interment. We now ►pproach the gaertlos of
moral well-doing; mhch endangered, it would wens,
in the vaults of the dead to the official living. What
becomes of the coffins, has been a frequent question
knocking at the meditative hearts et eouseasations.
churchwardens p • It would meets that sun as
Rhynoolus Lignarius has intestines for elm, so have
certain sextons bowels for lead. The elm is, how-
ever, represented by brown powder—the metal shows
no remaining dross. The sexton stomach leaves no
deposit. Doctor Lurie, with increasing astonishment,
jounnee from vault to vault;. and though "in some
kof them interment has been going on ever sines the
great fire in Laudon—in some even before that event,"
—the climber of coffins is, in comparison With the
time, of so account :

It iS extremely dielcult to arrive at satisfactory evidence of
the eases sad maser of the diaappearaace of the older
mans. That its missy installer a great camber of coffins
have best removed so ems doubt', but, oa qussdosisg dam-
est parties the reon,the mower Leaman always Idols% knew '
Mr. Crib'', of IC,ng street, Covestepardea, says that when
be became churchwarden of St. Paul, Covest-garskas sassy
yeses ago, the seatou kept the keys of the nulls, sod had
ancourrslled emu toting'. He hu resew' to believe that
many old leaden seine were removed prior to his aeoe•sion
to the sake. He believes that thus were usually removed
dariag the might, sad the lead sold.
Thos, the bran-new coffin that is a headlamp five-
-1 pound note to the sexton of one generation, has still
some value for the sexton that shall follow. For by
degrees the top coffin, like the tap card of speck, gets
shuffled to the bottom ; is burst and broken; and so
much old lead is malted and transmitted into shillings
—moved during the sight—for the glad official of the
time. The cheated, outraged bones—laid once so trimly
in that handsome leaden coffin—are, of course, flung
into that corner, piled in a heap " without any order
or decency." Such the enduing glory of a vault
funeral.

The me:tone's of St. Andrew Undershaft speaks
with the ingenuousness of her sex. She " knew that
the vault had oons•anily been cl 4 ared out, and the old
coffins removed to make room for newer ones." Ham-
let traces the dut of Alexander to the bunghole of a
beer-barrel : as a grim burlesque might not the coffin
lead of a London alderman be found in a London
water-spout ?

Mr. Underwood gave evidence to the following effect:—
I was chterehwarden about %weary years ago, and when on
the point of having that office the lust clearing out of the
vault was made. li.verything above a hundred yearn old
wsa then turned out. Many of the coffins were crushed
quite Hat. Many had sunk into the soil from the wei,ght of
the upper eoliths pressing upon them. All on the left-hand
side of the vault were removed ; none on the right, as tto y
were the newest. I do not know how many coffins were
then rtmovtd, but there must have been a great many,
as it took a week to do. The contents of the coffins were
buried in the churchyard. Ido not know what was dune
with the lead."

But, no doubt, the sexton of the time—the
alchemist sexton—could, if living, inform us. The
parish of St. Margaret, Westminster, is in a strange
state of ignorance in the matter of her old coffins :
The churchwardens of St. Margaret, IVestatinster, "can
not coronet for the absence of all the old coffins. They
Isser4 of any faculty from the bishop having beet.
granted for their removal." The vaults of Bt. Peter's, COTO •
hill, have been devoted to the reception of the dead as long
ae or perhaps longer than those of a y other church in the
metropolis, but nose of the authorities can account for their
saw mentateieg hut 72 coffins. There has evidently been
much reprehensible laxity in the guardianship of them
places generally throughout the metropolis. Even at the
present day in many instances t►e keys are kept by the sex.
ton or ',atones', and the churchwarden knows little or no-
thing of the condition or contents of the vaults.
In these cases, the philosophic sextons, like Mat-o%
the Mint. have, no doubt, " turned all the lead to
gold." Nevertheless, we acknowledge in the officials
of St. Andrew Underehaft a .iport of coassignee that
respected et coffu•lead under a hundred years old.
To have a century's sleep—though much of the time
severely crushed by superincumbent grave-fellows
is a hiadsome allowance; though returning to the
question of time, we are more strongly confirmed in
the belief that a hundred years more or less in a church
vault is a consideration unworthy of an immortal
nature and—the anti-climax must be pardoned for the
shrift enshrined in it—by no means justifies the cost
of a leaden coffin.

EXHIBITION OF 1861.

F' REIGN AND COLONIAL PhoDUCTIoNS,IB6I.—Ar
raneements mada by the Board of Customs to admit foreifu
and colonial productioes for the parpolies of the exhibition isf
18.51 : —let. That all works intended for she satitiace
should, in the first instance, be admitted into this country
without payment of duty ; that the goods should net be sub
ject to exaMination at the wateraido,but couveyed tithe place
of exhibition, at the excess, of the Importer, tinder charge
of proper officer, of the customs, to be there opened by the
importer or his agent, and examined in the presence of the
proper (Aar of the customs, in order to mew the amount
of duty Which would become payahle thereon if sold in this
ceun, and such market attached thereto as may be cen-
sideme n, emery to maintain the identity of the goods.
tad. That the *Gods brought for exhibition should
be mesidned as warehoused under the warehousing regu-
lations, in the'premises appointed for the exhibitlen ; and
that security be given in each case for the due re-exportation
of the goods, or payment of the duty at the elms of the
exhibition : and no foreign goods, liable to ditty, to be on
spy mount removed from the premises until the termina
non of the exhibition ; and then only on payment of the
distr, or for re-exportation. 3rd. That goods intended for
exhibition should be imported into one of the following ports;
vin.—London, Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, Newcastle, River,
Folkestone, and Southampton ; and the Board of Customs to
make such regulations, and appoint such officers of the
' department for taking charge of the goods at the pplays of
exhibition, in communication with the comabeioa for
conducting the proceedings, as ley be deemed essential fa
the security of the istareita of the

THE DEATH OP THE DUCHESS or MaaLitoreouoir.
Ewa eancemes with regret the deplane of lier Grace the
Dash= of Marlboreurb. Her grape was caelised with •
411111.11 as infant man live weeks ago, and was coneidered to
be mildly programing to recovery. A severe mautal shock
IMOeMaayszperienc4d about • fortnight ago took
seekapowerfulMM.llke nervous systems that her never
rallied from it, lad Mally conk under its bawhl Musses
at an early beer on Saturday moming. Deceased wasthe
Mb daughter of the Viscount and Viscountess Mhbrooke,
sad was mem maternally to the lets Lord Mee** 0.C.8.
fibs was bora November 26th, 1818, and was myriad la
1846 to the present Duke of Marlborough. His gram, bad
been previously married to Lady Jane Stewart, daughter of
the eighth Earl of Galloway, who died Oot. 12, 1844. TM
duchess Just deceased was remerkable for her great Meld
amomplathenenta and many amiable qualities. 13be wee also
honourably known wi bin her circle as an accomplished artist
la water coloun.
SOCIETY OF Scnoourserrgas.—The annual general

meeting of this society was held on &tardily in the ;come of
the Royal Literary Fund, Grant Rowell-street, the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury in the choir, supported by the Bishops
of Loudon sad Bt. /mph, Archdeacon Burney, Rev. Dr.
Rump. Rai. Dr. Bice, Rev. Dr. Major, Riv. Dr. Boyers,
R-v. J. Cooper, Rev. Canon Jennings, Rev. Dr. Vivian,
Rev. Dr. Saunders, Rev. Dr. Chambers, and other clergy-
men and gentlemen coenected with our public schools. The
treasurer's report for the past year stated that the receipts
had been 4271., and the payments 4471, the lament of
grants having been 471. Si: pensions of 101. each had been
granted to widows of deceased subscribers, and five pensions
of the same amount to widows of non-subscribers, while
1051. 12s. had been contributed towasds providing *donation
for the children of schoolmasters. The Bishop of St. Amph
moved, sad the Rev. Canon Jennings, seconded the adoption
ash.. report, which was carried unanimously. The meeting
was then addrcesod by the Bishop of London, Arehdeacon
Burney, Rev. Dr. Chambers, and other gentlemen, warmly
advocating the claims of the charity both upon the preferien
and the public'. The committee and officers were them re-
elected, and the meeting elored with a vote of thanks se the
archhehop for his kindness in taking the chair, which his
grace shortly atknowledg.d.
ELIZA CIIESTNEY.—This intrepid your woman
has been marred recently. She vt•ited Cambridge on
Friday, in company with her husband, on their wedding
clears:on. Bhe appears still to walk lame from the serious
s received trom the aro of the murdertr Rush, but in
otnsr respects she seems to have recovered her health.