American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1873-07-05

How TO dispose of the bodies of the
dead has always been more or less of a
puzzle to mankind, Judging from the
variety of means resorted to for that pur-
pose. In classic days they were burnt up
and the ashes collected and preserved in
neat little urns appropriately labeled,
which made the incest possible ornaments
for the eentre-table or the mantel-piece of
a Greek or Roman parlor. The Egyptians,
on the other hand, preferred to embalm
their ancestors and stick them up against
the walls of their dining rooms, much after
the style of family portraits in the present
day 1t is a curious instance of the ten
dency of human fashions to repeat them
selves that both of these processes are be
ginning to find advocates at the present
day. Our readers know how the dead
Mazzini was converted into Il particularly
unpleasant-loOking mummy for the delec-
tatiOn of his friends and followers, and
| now in England a movement appears to
have been started in favor of return to
the plan of incremation.
We gave ON Monday an extract from the
London Medical Press, which, in referring
to a discussion of the subject by Professor
Pole, exhibits decided leaning toward
the proposed innovation. Still more en-
phatic is the testimony of the Rev. Charles
Voysey, whose views on doctrinal matters
will hardly be deemed by conservative
church goers more heterodoX than his
position in regard to interments. He
thinks that dead bodies should be chemi
cally destroyed and the ashes inurned and
"disposed of according to the wishes of
the survivors in consecrated places, in
| inches in the walls of churches, or in
mortuary chapels designed for their re-
ception.'' This is practically return to
the classic custom. and is the fashion
which, according to Lord Lytton, will
obtain under the coming dominion of
Vril-ya. Both the medical journal and
the reverend gentleman adduce as argu
ments against the present method of in
humatiOn its comparative uncleanness,
| and its danger in Il hygienic point; a
| danger which, in a country like Great
Britain, of limited area and dense popula-
ton, is probably not exaggerated
To a majority of people any assertion
| that burying their dead in vaults or in the
earth is not the best and only proper way
| to dispose of them will doubtless come
| with the shock of something like heresy.
| Long habit has invested the practice with
\ a sanction to which the monumental
| brasses of stately cathedrals and the
peaceful loneliness of such cities of the
dead as Greenwood and Mount Auburn
have added a touch of tender poetry very
| alluring to the Imagination. Yet it can
not be gainsaid that there is force in the
arguments advanced against Inflammation,
and one day they will have 10 be consider
| ed. Every now and then tradition is
shaken by such an accident as that at
| Binghamton, v mere the cemetery was
| flooded by the spring freshets, or the still
more painful one at Little Rock, where a
| graveyard with all its relics was swept
| entirely away by the rising of the river.
| Incidents like these-and they are hardly
to be avoided, as Trinity churchyard itself
| may witness-shock the sensbility which
| clings to the sacredness of the grave. One
| of these days, perhaps, sensibility may be
| shocked into reasoning, and then-who
| knows-it may be found that the Rev. Mr.
| Voysey and the urnloving ancients were
right-Neto York Times.