The Sun.
London, England, 1851-07-22 00:00:00

GRAVEYARDS.—PAST AND PRESENT.
Hamlet spoke but the feelings of the human heart
when, moralizing in the graveyard, he exclaimed, " Did
these bones cost no more in the breeding but to play at
loggats with them? Mine ache to think on't." With truth,
be complaiaed that the clownish gravedigger " had no
feeling of his business;" and even in the present day
there are many who will cynically ask, " What matters
it to the escaped spirit if we be knocked about the
mazzard with a sexton's spade,' when the body has ful-
filled its office upon earth, and the withered frame has
returned to dust?" Many instances may also be cited,
in which the great ones of the earth have apparently
despised any care for the disposal of their remains.
Plato allowed no larger funeral monument than
would contain four heroic verses, and he set aside the
most barren ground for sepulture. Pliny derides care for
the dead, as a weakness only known to men. Socrates
told his friends they might burn or bury his body, if they
would not think thereby they had burned or buried Socra-
tes. Solon desired that his body might be carried to his na-
tive Salamis, to be burned and scattered to the winds.
Diogenes directed that his remains should be ex-
posed to birds and beasts of prey. Seneca would give
no directions as to the disposal of his body, stating that
the necessity of the ca'o would provide for it. But all
these are equivocal; for the very fact of their having
given directions respecting their remains evidences a
certain anxiety on the subject. Our own Shakspere
exhibits more frankness in the matter in his well-known
epitaph :7 _

" Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear°
To digg the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man that spares these stones :
Aid curst be he that moves my bones !"

Whatever men may say, they feel a care for the
future disposal of their bodies. In the moment of
thoughtless revelry and idle jesting they may
affirm their indifference ; but it is to no man a
pleasing reflection that, perhaps long before the worm
has finished his work, the silence of the tomb may be
invaded by the sexton's spade; that even in the grave
will competition still be rife, and the remains of
his neighbour jostle against his own; that his
bones, while still corruptible, may be cast no"
more into the light of day, to be viewed
by dogs or kicked about by the vulgar. No 1 man as
he hopes for immortality for his soul desires a decent
sepulture of his body. Amid the spasmodic strugglings
of this life, he looks forward to a freedom from care—
to a resting place, where his body may peacefully re-
pose, and where his friends may let fall the tear of re-
spect and sympathy.
The ancients exhibited peculiar cars for the dead, and
it is not very creditable to civitiestion that reverence for
the departed appears to have been always greater in
ruder ages than in those of luxury and refinement.
Egypt is peculiarly
distinguished for its monuments,
erected in honour of the dead; and the soil around its
ancient cities is literally sewn with the carefully preserved
remains of millions of bodies. Petra, the Edoin of pro-
phecy, whose existence was unknown for a thousand
years, when again discovered, presented on every side
tombs and mausoleums of surpassing splendoitr. Etruria
has recently become a region of enlightened curiosity,
for its sepulchral vases and monuments. The funereal
structures of ancient Greece and Rome are yet consulted
as models, while the ruder tumuli, which are scattered
over the face of the whole earth, show the prevalence of
the sentiment in which both originated.
Contrast these facts and feelings with the condition
of things which the report of the Sanitary Commission
and Mr. Walker's researches have brought to light—
burial grounds reeking with corruption—burned coffins
and mutilate,: remains—the dead resting in the one
apartment of the living while the funds were being
raised for intermen t—and the hundred other horrors
which investigation has unfolded to the world.—Leader.