of enforced burial, and 'hail with satisfaction and joy the prospect that a chariot of fire may receive them instead of the cold and darksome grave.'

The scheme has met with some enemies, and injudicious promoters of the system have not proved the least of them. The idea that it was sought to make it compulsory, was an unfortunate utterance. The notion of producing illuminating gas for general purposes from the combustion of the bodies was another mischievous idea.[1] Equally so was the proposal for the erection of a tall shaft in the cemetery grounds, where the gases could be seen consuming—something after the fashion, I suppose, of the twelfth century's lanternes des morts. The publication of crude and undigested fancies does more harm than good to the subject they are meant to benefit.

It has been urged that the practice of burning the dead had its origin in a heathen religion, but it is not wise to accept the imputation. Let us take Greece for an example. All historians inform us that the people of ancient Greece practised inhumation. But when they did practise cremation, they nowhere associated the burning of the dead with the worship of the gods. And we are at liberty to argue from this fact that neither did the aboriginal peoples from whom they derived it, regard it as an act with which religion had aught to do, the story of Odin notwithstanding. And the reason why the Greeks did not practise it earlier, was doubtless simply because the bulk of the colonists came from countries where another system prevailed. Cecrops and Danaus, who were instrumental in colonising Athens and Argos, were Egyptians, and Cadmus, the founder of Thebes in Bœotia, was a Phœnician.[2] Neither of these nations burnt their dead, but practised another system of burial.

There can, I think, be little doubt that the burning of the dead was originally resorted to upon sanitary grounds, and as a means of protecting the living from the effects of corruption. Putridity was observed to be loathsome and dangerous, and it was found that the practice of burning, and that only, at once resolved the body into its first elements. In Scandinavia, the dead were disposed of by fire from the earliest recorded times, and the great antiquity of the custom amongst the Celtæ, Sarmatians, and neighbouring nations, has never been doubted.[3] It was practised in our islands also in pre-historic times.

Cremation was the prevailing custom from remote ages in Scythia, or what is now called Tartary, and we are free to believe that its origin was similarly a hygienic one. The Scythians were the progenitors of the Thracians, and we read that these latter observed incineration from the earliest date.[4] The Thracians in their turn introduced the practice amongst the Greeks, although it is possible that a portion of the Hellenes learnt it from the Phrygians, who again very probably obtained it from India. The Greeks, too, evidently adopted it from motives of sanitary reform; at all events, there was no religious question involved in it. About 1500 B.C., the Greeks invariably buried their dead;[5] they had not learnt the valuable lesson. They do not seem to have burned them either in the ninth century before Christ, for the Institutes of Lycurgus specify the manner in which burial was to be performed. In the time of Socrates, however, 500 B.C., cremation appears to have become optional, for Plato makes Socrates say that he did not care whether he was burned or buried. It was, however, common enough about 100 B.C.; I myself have dug up on the site of Dardanus relics of this kind of sepulture. Time rolled on, and in their turn the Romans, who also originally inhumed,[6] borrowed the salutary practice, performing it first inside the city, and then extramurally. It did not become general in Rome, however, until towards the close of the Republic. Towards the end of the fourth century it became much neglected, and finally the Christians, inimical to the practice, although it was nowhere forbidden in the New Testament, made haste to abolish it in Europe. Burial and burning appear to have been practised contemporaneously for some little time, on our own Yorkshire wolds for example,[7] but ultimately the former triumphed.

I have said that the process of burning the dead is nowhere specially forbidden in the New Testament, and neither is it in the older Scriptures. Moses nowhere legislates against it, and it is reasonable to suppose that he must have heard of it, having been a considerable traveller. The early Jews are said to have objected to burning because they held the idea that the soul holds more or less intercourse with the body for a year after death. That the ancient race held this notion is corroborated by the 'dwelling among tombs and enquiring of spirits.'[8] The Hebrews were also said to have interred in caves or tombs—from Abraham down to Joseph of Arimathea—from a fear of premature interment, since the sun was not allowed to go down twice upon the unburied dead. It is more reasonable to suppose that the motive of public health was the correct one. Possibly they might have burned their dead also—as in nearly all originally well-wooded countries—if they had been possessed of fuel.[9] This was a drawback, and from what I have seen of Palestine, I doubt whether at any time sufficient fuel could have been found for everyday use in this way. When visited by a pestilence, however, the Rabbis admit that fires were kept burning in the valley of Tophet to consume the dead.[10] This was apparently a universal custom. When Homer hinted that the frequency of the kindling of the funeral pyres was owing to the contagion sent by Apollo, he alluded to the practice.[11] And without doubt cremation was the proper treatment at such times, and would spare the horrid