Part 22

§ 175. A review of the circumstances influencing the public feeling, and of the tendencies marked by the recent changes of practice in this country, and of the effects of the public institutions for interment amongst other civilised nations, enforce the conclusion that those arrangements to which the attention of the population is so earnestly directed, should be made with the greatest care, and that places of public burial demand the highest order of art in laying out the sites, and decorating them with trees and architectural structures of a solemn and elevating character. National arrangements with such objects, would be followed up and supported by the munificence of private individuals, and by various communities. It is observable in the metropolis, and in the larger towns that the direction of private feeling in the choice of sepulture is less affected by locality or neighbourhood, than by classes of profession or occupation, or social communion when living, and that such feeling would tend to association in the grave and monumental decoration. A proposal has been in circulation for the purchase of a portion of one of the new cemeteries, for the erection of a mausoleum for persons of the naval and military professions—members of the United Service clubs. At the public cemetery of Mayence are interred 150 veteran soldiers, officers and privates, natives of the town, who were buried in one spot, denoted by a monument on which each man’s name and course of service is inscribed in gold letters, and the monument is surmounted by a statue of the general under whom they served. At Berlin there is a cemetery connected with the _Invaleiden haus_ founded by Frederick the Great, in which many of the generals are buried with the private soldiers. The ground is well laid out, and ornamented with monuments, the latest of which are executed by Tieck, and other celebrated sculptors. This cemetery forms the favourite walk of the old soldiers. The great moral force, and the consolation to the dying and the incentive to public spirit whilst living, derivable from the natural regulations of a public cemetery, is almost entirely lost in this country, except in the few cases where public monuments are provided in the cathedrals. In the metropolis it would be very difficult to find the graves of persons of minor fame who have advanced or adorned any branch of civil or military service, or have distinguished themselves in any art or science. Yet there are few occupations which could not furnish examples for pleasurable contemplation to the living who are engaged in them, and claim honour from the public. The humblest class of artisans would feel consolation and honour in interment in the same cemetery with Brindley, with Crompton, or with Murdoch, the artisan who assisted and carried out the conceptions of Watt; or with Emerson, or with Simpson, the hand-loom weaver, who became professor of mathematics at Woolwich; or with Ferguson, the shepherd’s son; or with Dollond, the improver of telescopes, whose earliest years were spent at a loom in Spitalfields; or with others who “have risen from the wheelbarrow” and done honour to the country, and individually gained public attention from the ranks of privates; such for example as John Sykes, Nelson’s cockswain, an old and faithful follower, who twice saved the life of his admiral by parrying the blows that were aimed at him, and at last actually interposed his own person to meet the blow of an enemy’s sabre which he could not by any other means avert, and who survived the dangerous wound he received in this act of heroic attachment. The greater part of the means of honour and moral influence on the living generation derivable from the example of the meritorious dead of every class, is at present in the larger towns cast away in obscure grave-yards and offensive charnels. The artisans who are now associated in communities which have from their beneficent objects a claim to public regard, might if they chose it have their spaces set apart for the members of their own occupation, and whilst they derive interest from association with each other, they would also derive consolation from accommodation within the same precincts as the more public and illustrious dead.

§ 176. It is due to the memory of Sir Christopher Wren, to state that extra-mural or suburban cemeteries formed part of his plan for the rebuilding of London after the great fire. “I would wish,” says he, “that all burials in churches might be disallowed, which is not only unwholesome, but the pavements can never be kept even, nor pews upright: and if the church-yard be close about the church, this is also inconvenient, because the ground being continually raised by the graves, occasions in time a descent by steps into the church, which renders it damp, and the walls green, as appears evidently in all old churches. It will be inquired where, then, shall be the burials?—I answer, in cemeteries seated in the outskirts of the town; and since it has become the fashion of the age to solemnize funerals by a train of coaches (even where the deceased are of moderate condition), though the cemeteries should be half a mile or more distant from the church, the charge need be little or no more than usual; the service may be first performed in the church: but for the poor and such as must be interred at the parish charge, a public hearse of two wheels and one horse may be kept at small expense, the usual bearers to lead the horse, and take out the corpse at the grave. A piece of ground of two acres, in the fields, will be purchased for much less than two roods amongst the buildings. This being enclosed with a strong brick wall, and having a walk round, and two cross walks, decently planted with yew trees, the four quarters may serve four parishes, where the dead need not be disturbed at the pleasure of the sexton, or piled four or five upon one another, or bones thrown out to gain room. In these places beautiful monuments may be erected; but yet the dimensions should be regulated by an architect, and not left to the fancy of every mason; for thus the rich with large marble tombs would shoulder out the poor: when a pyramid, a good bust, or statue on a proper pedestal will take up little room in the quarters, and be properer than figures lying on marble beds: the walls will contain escutcheons and memorials for the dead, and the real good air and walks for the living. It may be considered, further, that if the cemeteries be thus thrown into the fields, they will bound the excessive growth of the city with a graceful border which is now encircled with scavenger’s dung-stalls.”[34]

§ 177. I might submit the concurrent opinions of several distinguished clergymen, communicated in reference to the general view of the importance of a large change in the practice of town interments, and the formation of suburban cemeteries, as being indeed conformable to the practice of the Jews and early Christians, and recognised in the words “There was a dead man carried _out_.” It was the ancient practice, as is perhaps indicated in the term exsequies, to bury outside of the town.[35] To this practice it is clear that the earliest Christians conformed. It was their custom to assign to the martyrs the most conspicuous places, over which altars or monuments were erected, where the believers used to assemble for nightly worship, so that it may rather be said of them that their burial places were their churches, than that their churches were their burial places.[36] When the temples of the heathen gods were converted into Christian churches, the _bones_ or relics of these illustrious persons, together with the altars, were removed and placed within the churches. The early practice of burial in the cemeteries near the earthly remains of those holy persons, being deemed a great privilege when those remains were removed, naturally led to the idea of its continuation, by the interment of _bodies_ in or about the first accustomed objects of worship. Nevertheless, interment in the interior of the church was held to be an unusual piece of good fortune, and when the Emperor Constantine, who had constituted Christianity the religion of the state, had granted to him a grave within the porticos of the church, it was esteemed the most unheard-of distinction. The ancient Greeks and Romans thought that a corpse contaminated a sacred place, and this idea as to the corpse was retained by the early Christians. When some persons in Constantinople began to make an invasion upon the laws, under pretence that there was no express prohibition of burying in churches, Theodosius, by a new law, equally forbade them burying in cities and burying in churches; and this whether it was only the ashes or relics of any bodies kept above ground in urns or whole bodies laid in coffins; for the same reasons that the old laws had assigned, viz., that they might be examples and memorials of mortality and the condition of human nature to all passengers, and also that they might not defile the habitations of the living but leave it pure and clean to them. St. Chrysostom, in one of his homilies upon the martyrs, says, “As before when the festival of the Maccabees was celebrated all the country came thronging into the city; so now when the festival of the martyrs who lie buried in the country is celebrated, it was fit the whole country should remove thither.” In like manner, speaking of the festival of Drossis the martyr, he says, “Though they had spiritual entertainment in the city, yet their going out to the saints in the country afforded them both great profit and pleasure.” The Council of Tribur, in the time of Charlemagne, to prevent the abuse of burying within churches, decreed that _no layman_ should thenceforth be buried within a church; and that if in any church graves were so numerous that they could not be concealed by a pavement the place was to be converted into a cemetery, and the altar to be removed elsewhere and erected in a place where sacrifice could be religiously offered to God.

Amongst the distinct clerical orders of the Primitive Church, Bingham (book iii. chap. 7) reckons the _Psalmistæ_, the _Copiatæ_, and the _Parabolani_. The Psalmistæ, or the canonical singers, were appointed to retrieve and improve the psalmody of the church. The business of the Copiatæ was to take care of funerals and provide for the decent interment of the dead. St. Jerome styles them _Fossarii_, from digging of graves; and in Justinian’s Novels they are called _Lecticarii_, from carrying the corpse or bier at funerals. And St. Jerome, speaking of one that was to be interred, “The _Clerici_,” says he, “whose office it was, wound up the body, digged the earth,” and so, according to custom, “made ready the grave.” Constantine incorporated a body of men to the number of 1100 in Constantinople, under the name of _Copiatæ_, for the service in question, and so they continued to the time of Honorius and Theodosius, junior, who reduced them to 950; but Anastatius augmented them again to the first number, which Justinian confirmed by two novels, published for that purpose. Their office was to take the whole care of funerals upon themselves, and to see that all persons had a decent and honourable interment. Especially they were obliged to perform this last office to the poorer people without exacting anything of their relations upon that account. The _Parabolani_ were incorporated at Alexandria to the number of 500 or 600, who were deputed to attend upon the sick, and take care of their bodies in time of weakness.[37] [Cod. Theod., leg. 43:—“Parabolani, qui ad curanda debilium corpora deputantur, quingentos esse ante præcipimus; sed quia hos minus sufficere in præsenti cognovimus, pro quingentis sex centos constitui præcipimus,” &c.] They were called _Parabolani_ from their undertaking (Παραβολον ἔργον) a most dangerous office in attending the sick. The foundation of a great city like Constantinople must have brought the magnitude of the service of the burial of the whole population distinctly under view, and have necessitated comprehensive and systematic arrangements of a corresponding extent, by the superintendence of superior officers through the gradations of duty of a disciplined force, which, even with the Eastern redundance of service, could scarcely have failed to be efficient and economical as compared with numerous separated and isolated efforts. A great prototype was thus gained, and the well-considered gradations of duty and service of the great city was carried out as far as practicable in the small parish. In some churches, where there was no such standing office as the Copiatæ or the Parabolani, the Penitents were obliged to take upon themselves the office and care of burying the dead; “and this by way of discipline and exercise of humility and charity which were so becoming their station.” _Bingham_, book xviii. cap. 2. The state of administrative information in these our times may surely be deplored, when any views can be entertained of making the small parish and the rude and barbarous service (multiplied, at an enormous expense) of the really unsuperintended common gravedigger and sexton, the prototypes for this most important and difficult branch of public administration of the greatest metropolis in the modern world.

On a full consideration I think it will be apparent that the exclusion of the burial of corpses in churches or in churchyards, and the adoption of burials in cemeteries, and the conspicuous interment there of all individuals whose lives and services have graced communities, will, in so far as it is carried out, be in principle a return to the primitive practice, restoring to the many the privilege, of which they are necessarily deprived by burials in churches, of association in sepulture with the illustrious dead, and giving to these a wider sphere of attention and honour, and beneficent influence.

On the immediate question of the arrangements for sepulture I beg leave to submit for consideration the following extracts from a communication from the Rev. H. Milman, which is more peculiarly due to him, as his examination before the Committee of the House of Commons does not appear to have elicited his full and matured opinions on the important subject:—

I cannot but consider the sanitary part of the question, as the most dubious, and as resting on less satisfactory evidence than other considerations involved in the inquiry. The decency, the solemnity, the Christian impressiveness of burial, in my opinion, are of far greater and more undeniable importance.

It must unquestionably be a government measure in its management as well as its organization. If you have understood my evidence as recommending parochial, rather than a general administration, such was not my intention. I thought that I had left that point quite open. When I stated (2729) the alternative of cemeteries provided by the national funds, and by parochial taxation, I represented the unpopularity of the latter mode of taxation: and (in 2782) I suggested certain advantages to be derived from the more general and public administration. The Committee, however, who seemed to incline strongly towards the parochial system, went off in that direction, and the questions turned rather on the practicability of that system, and the manner in which it might be organized.

Further reflection leads me to the strong conviction that the parochial system, even if there were no difficulties in forming the union of the smaller parishes for this object, could only furnish so loose and uncertain a superintendence over an affair of such magnitude, and requiring such constant vigilance, as to be altogether inadequate to the purpose. It is not easy, with their present burthens and responsibilities, to fill the parochial offices with men competent to the duty, and with sufficient leisure to devote to it. They are usually filled by men in business of some kind, with considerable sacrifice of their time, and of that attention which is required by their personal concerns. These duties, however are confined, onerous as they sometimes are, to their own immediate neighbourhood. But if we add to their responsibilities, the care of a remote and large churchyard, with all its complicated management, we impose upon them duties so arduous and so incompatible with their own interests and avocations, that the conscientious would shrink from undertaking them, and they would fall into the hands of a lower class of busy persons, anxious for notoriety, or with some remote view of advantage to themselves. It will be absolutely necessary to relieve the parish officers from a burthen which they cannot undertake without a sacrifice, which is more than can be expected from men engaged in business or in some of the active professions. Besides all this, the administration would be constantly passing from one to another; the objection to the whole parochial system, that a man no sooner learns the duty of his office, than he is released from it, would apply in a tenfold degree to an affair of such magnitude. The only way to secure the proper organization and conduct of a remote cemetery, would be by officers, judiciously selected, and adequately paid, who should devote their whole time to the business. Many of these objections, as the want of sufficient time without neglecting more serious duties, would apply to the clergyman of a large town parish, and if the cemetery be made an object of parochial taxation, the less he is involved in it the better.

On the wise and maturely considered organization, and on the provisions for the careful, constant, and vigilant superintendence of the whole system, will depend entirely its fulfilment of its great object, the re-investment of the funeral services, and of the sacred abode of the dead, in their due solemnity and religious influence. Nothing can be more beautiful, more soothing under the immediate influence of sorrow, or at all times more suggestive of tranquil, yet deep religious emotion, than the village churchyard, where the clergyman, the squire, or the peasant, pass weekly or more often by the quiet and hallowed graves of their kindred and friends, to the house of prayer, and where hereafter they expect themselves to be laid at rest under a stone perhaps, on which is expressed the simple hope of resurrection to eternal life, and where all is so peaceful, that the tomb may almost seem as if it might last undisturbed to that time. I am inclined to think that some of the unbounded popularity of Gray’s Elegy, independent of its exquisite poetic execution, may arise from these associations. Of these tranquillizing and elevating influences, so constantly refreshed and renewed, the inhabitants of large cities are of necessity deprived. The churchyard, often very small, always full, and crowded with remains of former interments, either carelessly scattered about, or but ill concealed, is in some cases a thoroughfare, where the religious service is disturbed by the noises, if not of passing and thoughtless strangers, with those of the din and traffic of the neighbouring street; and the new made grave, or the stone, which has just been fixed down, is trampled over by the passing crowd, or made the play-place of idle children. Where, as in some of the larger parishes in the west of London, the burial place is not contiguous to the church, it is more decent, but then it is secluded within high walls, or perhaps by houses, and is only open for the funeral ceremony, at other times inaccessible to the mourning relatives.

But will it not be possible, as we cannot give to the population of the metropolis, and other crowded towns, the quiet, the sanctity, the proximity to the church of the village place of sepulture, to substitute something at least decent, and with more appearance of repose and permanence; if not solemn, serious, and religiously impressive? The poor are peculiarly sensible of these impressions, and to them impression and custom form a great part, the most profound and universal influence of religion; and to them they cannot be given but by some arrangement under the sanction, and with the assistance, of the Government. Private speculation may give something of this kind to the rich, but private speculation looks for a return of profit for its invested capital. To my mind there is something peculiarly repugnant in Joint-Stock Burial and Cemetery Companies. But, setting that aside, they are and can be of no use to the _people_ of the metropolis and the large towns. There always has been, and probably always will be, some distinction in the burial rites (I beg to say that to the credit of my curates, they refuse to make any difference between rich and poor in the services of the church) and in the humbler or more costly grave of rich and poor—

Here lie I beside the door, Here lie I because I am poor; Further in the more they pay, Here lie I as well as they.

But it may be a question whether the very numbers of funerals, which must take place for a large town, with the extent of the burial places, may not be made a source of solemnity and impressiveness, which may in some degree compensate for the individual and immediate interest excited by a funeral in a small parish. That which at present, when left to a single harassed and exhausted clergyman, and one sexton, and a few wretched assistants, can hardly avoid the appearance of hurry and confusion, might be so regulated as to impose, from the very gathering of such masses of mortality, bequeathed together to their common earth, not (let me be understood) in one vault or pit, but each apart in his decent grave. The vast extent of cemetery which would be required for London (suppose six or eight for the whole metropolis and its suburbs), if properly kept, and with such architectural decorations, and the grand and solemn shade of trees appropriate to the character of the ground, could scarcely fail to impress the reflective mind, and even to awe the more thoughtless. Our national character, and our more sober religion, will preserve us, probably, from the affectations and fantastic fineries of the Père la Chaise ground at Paris. From some of the German cemeteries we may learn much as to regulation, and the proper character to be maintained in a cemetery of the dead.

National sepulture is a part, and a most important part of national religion; of all the beautiful services of our Church, none is more beautiful (I might wish, perhaps, two expressions altered) than our service for burial. I could have wished that the Church had taken the initiative in this great question. I trust that she will act, if the State can be prevailed upon to move, in perfect harmony with the general feeling on the subject. It is fortunate, that in the Bishop of London we have not merely a person of liberal mind, and practical views, but one who brings the experience of the parish priest of a large London living to his Episcopal authority and influence.