The Portland daily press., 1871-12-06

A writer in the December number of Old and
Neay advocates return to the Greek custom of
burning the bodies of the dead. 1t is mainly
ON san fry grounds that the classic custom is
admirable: but to convenience and to the sat
isfaction of certain finer requirements of the
imagination an appeal is also made in support
of the suggestion. In communities no older
than Portland, even, where the want of room
has never at any time been difficulty of which
the inhabitants were conscious, the sanitary
consideration has its due weight. The pollu-
ton of wells and springs and the various direct
contaniinations of air and water by the pres
ence of crowded backgrounds in large towns
are facts established by modern hygienic sci
ence. 1t has never yet, however, been necessary
in any American city to resort to such extraor-
binary devices to bury the dead as are indlspen-
sable in older countries, the details OF which
are too horrible for recital The periodical
destruction of all human remains is among the
least offensive of these enforced dissertations
But the experience of our own city in the mat
ter of what is called the Eastern Cemetery is
proof that not only the demands of health but of
decency and proper respect for the dead are some
times disregarded "on the unlimited side of the
Atlantic" However, such unpleasant conse-
quences are here chiefly the result of careless
ness or ignorance. Burial-places that are grad.
ually surrounded by growing towns may easily
be removed, after all immediate personal inter
est in the occupants is gone, beyond the limits
of probable territorial growth. This has been
done in Waterville, recently, without protest
from any quarter The discussion of the ques-
ton of cremation from what may be the SEN
timental standpoint is all, therefore, that need
engage our attention.
And first, if the Old and Ne,o wishes to OBJ
tain a favorable consideration for what it pro-
poses it will be necessary for it to keep out of
sight the utilitarian aspect of the case. The
theory that it is graceful thing for man to
bequeath his ashes to his fellows, after his body
has been destroyed by combustion or other
chemical process, for the purpose of enriching
the soil, may be correct. Nor is there anything
repulsive about it to the philosophical mind
But it is so easy to turn the whole thing into
ridicule by asking if luxuriant crop of cab
bages will solace one for the loss of a cherished
friend, and if a splendid growth of onions will
dry the tears of a bereaved widower, that this
part of the subject should be ignored by the adj
'vocates of cremation, Professionally, at least
They might, it is true, turn the scales by show
ing the attractive side of the picture and point
ing to the temperance of the grace and fra
GRANGE of beautiful lives in the soft odors and
brilliant colors of flowers. They might prophe-
sy of a beautiful maiden, as Shakespeare did,
only with more truth: "From her pure and a.,a-
polluted flesh shall violets spring. And they
might point also to the not unpleasant example
of the ancient worthy who crowned a life of
eminent usefulness and, philanthropy by leav-
ing his body to a designated person, who suf-
fered from extreme poverty, expressly to en-
rich his fields. But one good laugh, such as
the effect of the most just or pleasing SUCCESS
ton
In other respects there is nothing about ore
nation that is not acceptable to the most ex-
quisite fancy. The warm, pure flame gently
removes all that can decay. Fire cheats the
worm and defes corruption. 1t chases away
With its cheerful blaze all those horrible imag-
lnings touching the grave that haunt the best
balanced mind, and when the influence of the
Old and Neo shall have restored the urn-burial
of the Greeks there will be no more sad i'm
ages of the ''shroud and pail, and breathless
darkness and the narrow house, The "cold
ground and the SOLITARY tomb" will then be
but horrors of the paet.
The advocates of cremation will probably find
the stoutest objection coming from those who
shudder at the thought of losing their identity
But neither these unphilosphical people, nor
certainly those who believe in the resurrection
Of the body, will resist longer when they are
as they may be that the identity of
this mortal frame is as completely lost in the
course of time, through the action of the ele-
ments, asst can be through the action of fire. Ce-
sar's clay must by this time got far beyond that
stage of which there is Shaks-
pearian record, having long ago been resolved
INTO its original constituents and used again,
perhaps score of times, in building up other
orms of life Can the remains of Shelley,
burned on the Mediterranean shore by Byron
md Trelawney, have lost their integrity more
completely? When the dead rise from their
ong sleep at the archangel's trump, will there
De greater difficulty in restoring one than the
'ther to his original corporal abiding-place?
RUPERT.