The Sun.
London, England, 1844-10-18 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING OCTOBER 18, 1844.

COURT CIRCULAR.

WINDSOR, TllURSDAY.—Yesterdayititernoon their
Royal highnesses the Princess Royal and the Princess
Alice walked on the Castle Terrace.

BURIAL IN TOWNS.
FROM A CORRESPONDENT.)

and half the towns in the kingdom, or more, will be
found to tell a similar tale.

Where is Mr. Mackinnon's Bill ? Why does not
the Legislature step forward and put its veto upon
this crying evil ? Every town in the kingdom which
does not already possess a cemetery, situated at
a proper distance from its precincts, should be
compelled to abandon its present practice, and adopt
the former. No interment whatever should be permitted
within a town, except under peculiar circumstances.
I would fain arouse the attention of the public to the
importance of this subject ; more especially would I
call upon the ministers of religion to come forward
and render their aid in correcting a monster evil, and
in promoting a public good. The clergy of the Es-
tablished Church are not permitted to bury in uncon-
secrated ground. Their grounds are " consecrated "
to a holy purpose ; and yet, in the performance of
their duty, in such as that at Poole, are not the laws of
decency, morality, and religion violated ? In such
cases, " consecration" becomes a farce, and the ord
nances of the Church a bye-word.
Poole, Oct. 16, 1844.

This morning their Royal Highnesses the Princess
Royal and the Princess Alice were taken their ac-
customed airings, riding on ponies in the pleasure-
grounds of the Castle.

" The grave, dread thing!!
Men shiver when thou'rt named: Nature, appall'd,
Shakes off her wonted firmness. Ah, how dark
The long extended realms and rueful wastes,
Where nought but, silence reigns, and night, dark night!
• • . he sickly t
• •
By glimmering through Thy low- br oapw'der, mirky vaults,
Furr'd round with misty damps and ropy slime,
Lets fall a supernumerary horror,
And only serves to make thy night more irksome."

Yesterday was the birthday of his Royal Highness
Frederick, Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburgh
Strelitz. The auspicious event was celebrated at
Kew. Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Glou-
cester arrived from town in the forenoon to pay a
visit of congratulation to the Hereditary Grand Duke
ancl Duchess of Mecklenburgh Strelitz, and remained
to lunch with their Royal Highnesses and the Duke
and Duchess of Cambridge.
In. the afternoon the Duchess of Gloucester left
Kew, and returned to her residence, Gloucester House,
Piccadilly.
A deputation from the Staines and Richmond
Junction Railway Company, consisting of Mr. Charles
Finch, Chairman, Mr. Apsley Pellatt, Mr. C. J.
Clarke, Mr. 'William Roy, Solicitor, Mr. 11.. Bird,
Engineer, and Mr. J. C. Govett, Secretary, had an
interview with the Earl of Dalhousie yesterday, at the
office of the Board of Trade.

In The Sun of September 3 appeared a well-
written article, copied from the Leicester Chronicle,
pointing out some of the ill effects arising from the
dangerous practice of burying the dead in towns. It
is a subject but little considered, and consequently the
evils arising from it are seldom thought of. Was
every town within itself provided with an extensive
and well-ordered burial-ground, where there would
be no possibility of the coffins becoming crowded to-
gether, even then the practice would be bad and un-
justifiable. But taking the fact as it is, namely, that
the burial-grounds are generally of small dimensions,
and filled with dead, even to heaping up, how much
more is a continuance of this system to be deprecated,
as fraught with most imminent and dangerous conse-
sequences. It is strange that, whilst we boast of our
advancement in the arts and sciences, and assert the
moral and intellectual improvement of all classes of
society, we should still, as a nation, tenaciously
adhere to a practice unworthy the most ignorant ages
of the world, and in every way revolting to the best
feelings of our nature. At no period, probably, has
the spirit of the philanthropist shown itself, or been
more active, than during the present age—in the
hospitals, the visiting societies, the humble individual
efforts to alleviate the misery of our fellow-creatures,
and in providing suitable relief for their bodily suf-
ferings. It is strange, too, that while this is being
done, we look calmly
on, and—by our tacit acknow-
ledgment of the fact, without making an effort to
arrest its progress—encourage a perpetual monster
reservoir of pestilence, in the crowded and heaped up
masses of decayed mortality to be found in every old-
established burial-ground in the kingdom.
Habit bas accustomed us to view this state of things
with indifference, and so blunted the sensitive feelings
of our nature, that we bestow not a thought upon the
sickness and death, which is too often attributable
(although we knew it not at the time) to the inhaling
of the noxious and poisoned atmosphere generated
from the dead.
" The main object of a burial-ground," says Mr.
Loudon, "is the disposal of the remains of the dead
in such a manner as that their decomposition, and re-
turn to the earth from which they sprung, shall not
prove injurious to the living, either by affecting their
health, or shocking their feelings, opinions, or preju-
dices. In a burial-ground,
properly arranged and
managed, a coffin, after it is once interred, should
never again be exposed to view, nor a human bone be
disturbed." Let those who read bear this in mind.
No one will dispute the correctness of the assertion,
while every one will admit that the principle is daily,
in thousands of cases, being violated.
Let us, for a moment, turn our attention to the
decomposition of the body, and its results. We are
all aware of the indestructability of the bones. "In
the ante-hominal part" of the creation there are bones
daily discovered, which have existed 6,000 years at
least. Dr. Charles Loudon informs us, " that he has
seen numerous human bones, in certain caves near
Naples, which are supposed to be those of the Grecian
colonists who settled there before the Christian era,
or perhaps those of an older race, who inhabited Magna
Grwcia."
This, of itself, should furnish sufficient argument fur
the inviolability of the grave being respected.
" The health of the living," continues Mr. Loudon,
" is chiefly affected by a certain description of gas,"
generated in the decomposition of the body. "To
inhale this gas, undiluted with atmospheric air, is in-
stant death, and even when much diluted, it is pro-
ductive of disease which commonly ends in death."
" This gas abounds to a fearful extent in the soil of all
crowded burial-grounds, and has been proved to be more
or less present in the soil throw!! out of graves where
bodies have been interred before. "In the years 1782
and 1783, when the disinterment from the burying-
grounds of Les Innocents, in Paris, took place, under
the direction of some eminent French chemists, these
philosophers wished to analyse the gas, but were un-
able to procure it. Fourcroy says, In vain we en-
deavoured to induce the grave-diggers to procure us
some of this elastic fluid ; they uniformly refused.
The horrible odour and poisonous activity of this
fluid, announces to us that it is mingled with hydro-
genous and azotic gas, holding sulphur and phospho-
rus in solution. It may contain, also, another dele-
terious vapour, whose nature has hitherto escaped
philosophical research, while its terrible action upBn
life is too strikingly evinced.' " The secondary ob-
ject of a cemetery is, or ought to be, the improve-
ment of the moral sentiments and general taste of
all classes, and more especially of the great
masses of society. In vain we look for
an attractive influence or argument in the crowded
churchyards of towns. Tall weeds, rank grass, and
neglected gravestones, do indeed teach a lesson; but
it is one where, too often, mingled dread and disgust
usurp the place of moral reflection and calm and holy
feelings. " Why," says Washington Irving, " should
we seek to clothe death with unnecessary terrors, and,
spread horrors around the tomb of those we loved ?
The grave should be surrounded by everything that
might inspire kindness and veneration for the dead, or
that might win the living to virtue. It is the place not
of disgust and dismay, but of sorrow and meditation., ,
" Nothing can make amends," says Coleridge, " for the
want of the soothing influences of nature, and for the
absence of those types of renovation and decay which
the woods and the fields offer to the notice of the
serious and contemplative mind. To feel the
i force of
this sentiment, let a man only compare in imagina-
tion the unsightly manner in which our monuments
are crowded together in the busy,
noisy, unclean, and
almost grassless churchyard of a large town, with
the still seclusion of a Turkish cemetery in some
remote place, and yet further sanctified by the grovead
of cyprus in which it is embosomed." " Where is it,
we would ask," says the learned and elegant author
of " Necropolis Glusguensis," " that the innate desire
which is felt in every bosom to live in the recollection
of his companions, the pleasing hope that he may still
be a remembered denizen of this fleeting world,
is more likely to be realised than at the spot
where his ashes are laid? Where is it
that the extincta amabitur, such as Cicero professed to
his daughter Tallia, and which is still the pledge of
friendship offered at the couch of the dying, is more
likely to be experienced in all its force, and all its
purity, than at the tomb, where all the remains of
mirth and loveliness is lying? Where is it, indeed,
that the heart is likely to be so feelingly moved, or
the memory to be so powerfully roused, as at a
parent's grave or a sister's tomb ?" " A garden
cemetery is the sworn foe to preternatural fear and
superstition. The ancients, from their minds being
never polluted with the idea of a charnel house, nor
their feelings roused by the revolting emblems of
mortality, contemplated death without terror, and
visited its gloomy shrine without fear. With them
death was tranquillity, and the only images that ever
associated with it, were those of peaceful repose and
tender sorrow.

H. J.

DRURY-LANE THEATRE.

Dispatches were received yesterday at the Colonia'
office, from the Governor of Sierra Leone.

Auber's opera, The Syren, was produced at this
theatre last evening, with all that attention to scenery
and costume which might have been expected from a
management of which Mr. Bunn has the direction.
It is, in fact, impossible that a piece could have been
put upon the stage in a manner more complete than
this opera has been at Drury-lane. The audience
properly appreciated this attention to the mise en scene,
and were loud in their applause as the different scenes
from the pencil of the Grieves' were exhibited. The
double scene in the second act, in which the lower
part represents Scopetto's inn, and the upper part a
winding footpath among the mountains of
the Abruzzi, is a chef d'oeuvre of scenic
effect. " Finis coconut opus," says the old
Latin adage, and in accordance with that scrap of
the written wisdom of our ancestors, the grand
scenic display has been reserved for the last; and
this last, we believe, is Drury-lane's " own thunder."
In the original, the voice of Scopetto is heard carolling
away in the distance, as he swims towards the barque,
having escaped from the guards of the Duke de
Popoli. In the Drury-lane version, his triumph is
represented visibly. The barque YEtna appears at
anchor, her colours flying, and her yards manned by
Scopetto's band, who have taken possession of her,
and Scopetto himself appears on her quarter-deck,
her guns firing a salute in his honour, while the
Duke and his attendants arrive on the shore just in
time to be spectators of his triumph. We have so
lately detailed the plot, that it is unnecessary to re-
peat it. Suffice it to say, the original has been
closely followed. The following is the cast at this
theatre :

COWES, ISLE OF WIGHT.
(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)
OCT. 16.—Her Majesty has not been outside of Osborne
grounds this morning. Prince Albert rode out on
horseback at a quarter before four this afternoon. The
royal barge left the yacht for Osborne. Her Majesty
embarked from the beach, with the Prince, when they
proceeded along the shore, and returned at five o'clock.
There being no quay at;Osborne, the barge was rowed
stern on, and her Majesty slipped across the thawls, and
leaped from the bows on to the shore, like a deer, and
skipped up the beach like a girl of fifteen. Turning
round, and seeing a gentleman of her suite stepping very
carefully out of the boat, she enjoyed a laugh at his ex-
pense. It is only afloat that anything can be seen of the
royal visitors. Osborne House and grounds are so re-
tired that there is no chance of her Majesty's privacy
being intruded on. - The shore of Osborne is also shut
out from the public by the grounds of Norris, Spring-
hill, and Slatwood's.

ocT. 17.—This afternoon the royal yacht steamed
close up to Osborne beach, when the Queen, with Prince
Albert and suite, embarked on board her. She steamed
through Spithead to the Nab, and] returned about four
o'clock. Yesterday and to-day have been very fine for
the season—plenty of wind, a beautiful sun, and smooth
water ;: the barometer rising.—Monday it was as low
as 28'53; Tuesday, 2860; Wednesday, 28.67; Thurs-
day, 28-95.
Her Majesty is dressed very plain, and seems to be for
a time tired of pomp and show. She could not have se-
lected a spot more retired. There were, the first day,
seventeen of the rural ,police stationed about the
grounds, and at the different gates. These having been
told their services would not be required, there are now
only five of the London police to attend to the different
roads to the royal residence.
Sir William Montagu is entertaining Lord Fitzcla-
rence, Lord Yarborough, Sir Bellingham and Lady
Graham, and a large party of fashionables, at Grantham
House.

The Duke de Popoli, Mr. Borrani ; Scopetto, Mr. W.
Harrison ; Scipio, Mr. D. W. King ; Balbaya, Mr.
Stretton ; Pecchione, Mr. Weiss ; Zerlina, Miss Rain-
forth ; Mathea, Miss Betts.

Miss Rainforth made a most interesting Zerlina.
In the delineation of the character of a warm-hearted,
artless, simple-minded girl, just budding into woman-
hood, there is no young lady on the stage who can
compete with Miss Rainforth. Such a character is
Zerlina, and it received full justice at her hands. She
was'in excellent voice, and we have seldom seen her
to more advantage. She gave her grand scene,
the prima donna song in the second act,
admirably, and was deservedly encored ; but
her great triumph, the scene in which she showed
herself an artiste in the highest sense of the word, was
the duet with Scipio, in the third act. Her voice was
tremulous with feeling, yet beautifully clear withal,
and she infused into the music an intensity, a passion
of pathos, which thrilled to the heart. She was ad-
mirably supported by Mr. D. W. King, whose Scipio
was a highly creditable performance throughout.
Harrison, as Scopetto, was very unequal. At the
commencement he was hard and angular. In the
quartett towards the conclusion of the first act he
was very good, and in the solo at the commence-
ment of the second act he was excellent. In this
solo he was encored, and most deservedly so; but
during the whole of the first and second acts he ap-
peared tame. The Italian is a creature of impulse—a
child of light and air—by turns the gayest of the
gay, and the most sanguinary of the revengeful ;
always in extremes, but ever impassioned, ever ener-
getic. Dum vivinzus vivamus is his motto; and while
he lives he enjoys life—the mere act of living—with
a zest undreamed of by the denizens of the " cold
and cloudy climes " of the north. Harrison did not
seem to enter into the character ; he was a smug-
gler as a matter of business, for the gain
,of the thing ; whereas Scopetto delighted even
more in tricking the Duke of Popoli than in plun-
dering him. The third act was a decided improve-
ment upon the former two ; he seemed to warm in
his part; but even here a little more animation would
be a decided improvement. If Harrison was guilty
of the sin of under-acting, Stretton was certainly
guilty of the sin of over-acting in Balbaya. He was
very funny, but he was unnaturally so. He must
pare down some of his exuberances, act a little less to
the galleries, and his Balbaya will be an admirable
buffo performance. Borrani, as the Duke, was per-
fect—polished, affable, and courteous, yet self-suffi-
cient, vain, and weak; never has the " foolish and the
faded gentleman" been more correctly delineated.
His fine bass voice told admirably in the concerted
pieces, and his " Brava! brava! during the prima
donna's song, was precisely that of one of those be-
powdered representatives of the dilettanti of a by-gone
age, who occasionally pay an angel's visit to the Opera
on the first night of a new singer. Borrani has made
this line of character his own. We should much like
to see him in Baron Pompolilm. At the conclusion
all were called for, and all loudly applauded. The
house was crowded to excess.

THE SIX. MILE RANGE.—When Captain Warner
speaks of his six-mile range, for which he required but
a two-pounder, he states a physical impossibility, in the
present state of chemical science ; and Captain Warner
is certainly not one in whom any reasonable hope could
be indulged that by his knowledge any advance will be
made. By the use of the fulminates nothing s ould be
gained, for, with compounds so loosely held together,
there appears no certainty ; they are all liable to spon-
taneous decomposition. The fulminate of mercury was
considered sate while mixed with spirit of wine, yet
while in this state it exploded, and Mr. Hennell, of Apo-
thecaries'-hall, was & stroyed by it. Mr. Eley, the in-
ventor of the wire cartridges, who had repeatedly mixed
his fulminate of mercury, perished from the explosion of
a pound of this highly dangerous composition. A French
vessel, fitted during the French war with some new de-
tonating compounds, was never heard of after it sailed
from Toulon. The large gun made for Mehemet Ali,
requiring a charge of 401 b., and throwing a ball of
4801 b., is considered too dangerous to use. Rockets of
1001 b. are not found to move one yard. There appears
to be a limit to destructive powers, and we have reason
to thank heaven it is so. The service may be improved,
rockets may eventually be made to go straight, shells
may be made percussioned, and a greater precision given
to cannon firing. It is possible, by the introduction of
the patent principle of Mr. Harding's new gun, which
has given so great an increase to the power of sporting
guns, we may improve that of the cannon ; but these, if
effected, would be but a slight step to realising the
theories of Warner or of Normandy. The evil they
cause, and that is a serious though unavoidable one, is.
that scientific characters are debarred from the ground
these enthusiasts claim as their own. Every application
for experiment is now refused at Woolwich, because 98
out of 100 applicants prove to be ignorant adventures.—
(Polytechnic Magazine for September.) To project a
ball, therefore, a distance of six miles, by means of any
explosive force, the action of which on the projectile is
instantaneous, and ceases from the moment that it leaves
the mouth of the piece, is physically impossible ! But,
while maintaining this position, we are not prepared to
deny the possibility of obtaining that result by means of
a projectile that shall contain within itself the principle
of movement. This principle is peculiar to the rocket ;
and, although, from this inherent cause, hitherto no cer-
tain result has been obtained from these projectiles
beyond a limited range, still, as the principle is known,
the question to be solved is the possibility of its elabora-
tion—whether, for example, the combined skill of the
mechanist and the pyrotechnist can so graduate this self-
moving principle as to impart to the projectile a velocity
that will not expose it to the law of atmospheric resist-
ance, and at the same time a sufficient intensity of action
to accomplish its trajectory course. If Captain Warner
can really attain a range of six miles, it is by this
principle alone. But, even if this range can be obtained,
we may question the power of directing a projectile
through so lorig a trajectory with any degree of accuracy.
—Polytechnic Magazine for October.
ARMENIAN CEMENT.—The jewellers of Turkey,
who are mostly Armenians, have a singular method of
ornamenting watch-cases, &c., with diamonds and other
precious stones, by simply glueing or cementing them
on. The stone is set in silver or gold, and the lower
part of the metal made flat, or to correspond with the
part to which it is to be fixed ; it is then warmed gently,
and has the glue applied, which is so very strong that
the parts thus cemented never separate. This glue,
which will strongly unite bits of glass, and even polished
steel, and may of course be applied to a vast variety of
useful purposes, is thus made :—Dissolve five or six bits
of gum mastich, each the size of a large pea, in as much
spirits of wine as will suffice to render it liquid ; and, in
another vessel, dissolve as much isinglass—previously a
little softened in water (though none of the water must
be used)—in French brandy and good rum, as make a
bitsof
two-ounce phial of very strong glue, ldingst
twob rubbed
gum galbanum, or ammoniacuaa, which
or ground till they are dissolved. :Then mix the whole
with a sufficient heat. Keep the glue in a phial
closely
stopped, and when it is to be used, ret the phial in
boil-
ing water.—Cyclop,rdia of Receipts.
The Duchess of Sutherland steamer, which sailed
from Inverness on Monday evening, for London, was
compelled by stress of weather to put back to Cromarty,
where she arrived on Thursday afternoon, after being
three days at sea without having made further progress
than to Banff, such was the violence of the gale. Seve-
ral of the passengers, among whom were Mr. Tytler (the
historian of iicotland) and his family, left the ship, in-
tending to go by land to London. The weather having
moderated, the Duchess sailed again on Friday morning
at one o'clock,

The burial-ground at Poole, Dorset, measuring about
one acre, was consecrated by the Bishop of Chester,
July 3, 1781. The number of burials which have
there taken place since that period to the present time,
is about 6,300. Mr. Loudon calculates that in the
ordinary mode of burial, with and without head-stones
and monuments, with necessary roadway, &c., that
' the extent of an acre of ground will give 1,361 graves.
Taking, therefore, the number of interments in the
Poole ground from 1784 to 1796, inclusive, we have
1,369. We will suppose that each grave was seven
feet in depth. The extent of the ground was then
covered. From 1797 to 1811, inclusive, 1,377 inter-
ments took place ; the ground was, therefore, covered
a second time. Mr. Loudon argues that, for the
health of the community it ought to be
imperative that a layer of earth, of not
less than six feet in depth, should be left
between the under and upper coffins, so that
the earth may absorb the greater portion of the gene-
rated gases. In the ground now spoken of, sup-
posing that the earth left between the under and
upper coffins was two feet in depth, the latter would
then be about three feet from the surface of the
ground. It then necessarily follows that in 1811,
after 2,746 interments (and upwards) had taken
place, that the ground was full. Not another
interment could take place without the desecration
of a grave. The coffin and the remains of one
must be displaced to make room for the remains of
another. The parish register shows, as before
observed, that since the consecration of the ground,
about 6,300 interments have taken place ; therefore,
after the ground was filled, the remains of three thou-
sand five hundred and upwards were added—not
buried, or, if so, the majority only for a time—not one
of which should ever have been placed there.
"Is the human heart so callous to right feeling,
that men must wait until their own parents or rela-
tives are dragged from their graves before they will
act and speak out on this question ?"
It is truly said that " use is second nature." As
man, by the force of example, becomes habituated to
a life that, in moral capacity, places him below the
beasts of the creation, so does the most sensitive and
refined in character become indifferent and callous to
a practice every way worthy the most degraded ages
of the world. Many there are who, looking upon the
bright green sod of a country churchyard, may
accuse the writer of exaggeration. There is none.
Let them beware of the exhalations of burial-
grounds. Pestilence and death hang over every grave.
The crowded state of the ground at Poole is not an
isolated case. Let the parish registers be examined,