Chapter 2 The Londoner's Garden.

Brick walls do not secrete air. It comes in through your doors and windows, from the streets and alleys in your neighborhood; it comes in without scraping its feet, and goes down your throat, unwashed, with small respect for your gentility. You must look abroad, therefore, for some elements of an unwholesome home: and when, sitting at home, you do so, it is a good thing if you can see a burial-ground-one of "God's gardens," which our city cherishes.

Now, do not look up with a dolorous face, saying, "Alas! these gardens are to be taken from us!" Let agitators write and let Commissioners report, let Government nod its good-will, and although all the world may think that our London burial-grounds are about to be incontinently jacketed in asphalte, and that we ourselves, when dead, are to be steamed off to Erith-we are content: at present this is only gossip.1 On one of the lowest terraces of hell, says Dante, he found a Cordelier, who had been dragged thither by a logical demon, in defiance of the expostulations of St. Francis. The sin of that monk was a sentence of advice for which absolution had been received before he gave it: "Promise much, and perform little." In the hair of any Minister's head, and of every Commissioner's head, we know not what "black cherubim" may have entwined their claws. There is hope, while there is life, for the old cause. But if those who have authority to do so really have determined to abolish intramural burial, let us call upon them solemnly to reconsider their verdict. Let them ponder what follows.

Two or three years ago, a book, promulgating notions upon spiritual life, was published in London by the Chancellor of a certain place across the Channel. It was a clever book; and, among other matter, broached a theory. "Our souls," the Rev. Chancellor informed us, "consist of the essence, extract, or gas contained in the human body;" and, that he might not be [pg 603] vague, he made special application to a chemist, who "added some important observations of his own respecting the corpse after death." But we must decorate a great speculation with the ornamental words of its propounder.

"The gases into which the animal body is resolved by putrefaction are ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, cyanogen, and sulphureted, phosphureted, and carbureted hydrogen. The first, and the two last-named gases, are most abundant." We omit here some details as to the time a body takes in rotting. "From which it appears, that these noble elements and rich essences of humanity are too subtle and volatile to continue long with the corpse; but soon disengage themselves, and escape from it. After which nothing remains but the foul refuse in the vat; the mere caput mortuum in the crucible; the vile dust and ashes of the tomb. Nor does inhumation, however deep in the ground, nor drowning in the lowest depths and darkest caverns of the fathomless abyss, prevent those subtle essences, rare attenuate spirits, or gases, from escaping; or chain down to dust those better, nobler elements of the human body. No bars can imprison them; no vessels detain them from their kindred element, confine them from their native home."

We are all of us familiar with the more noticeable of these "essences," by smell, if not by name. Metaphysicians tell us that perceptions and ideas will follow in a train: perhaps that may account for the sudden recollection of an old-fashioned story-may the moderns pardon it. A young Cambridge student, airing his wisdom at a dinner-party, was ingenious upon the Theory of Winds. He was most eloquent concerning heat and cold; radiation, rarefaction; polar and equatorial currents; he had brought his peroration to a close, when he turned round upon a grave Professor of his College, saying, "And what, sir, do you believe to be the cause of wind?" The learned man replied, "Pea-soup-pea-soup!" In the group of friends around a social soup-tureen, must we in future recognize

"The feast of reason, and-the flow of soul!"

How gladly shall we fight the fight of life, hoping that, after death, we shall meet in a world of sulphureted hydrogen and other gases! And where do the Sanitary Reformers suppose that, after death, their gases will go-they who, in life, with asphalte and paving-stones, would have restrained the souls of their own fathers from ascending into upper air?

Against us let there be no such reproach. Freely let us breathe into our bosoms some portion of the spirit of the dead. If we live near no church-yard, let us visit one-Mesmerically, if you please. Now we are on the way. We see narrow streets and many people; most of the faces that we meet are pale. Here is a walking funeral; we follow with it to the church-yard. A corner is turned, and there is another funeral to be perceived at no great distance in advance. Our walkers trot. The other party, finding itself almost overtaken, sets off with a decent run. Our party runs. There is a race for prior attention when they reach the ground. We become interested. We perceive that one undertaker wears gaiters, and the other straps. We trot behind them, betting with each other, you on Gaiters, I on Straps. I win; a Deus ex machina saves me, or I should have lost. An over-goaded ox rushes bewildered round a corner, charges and overthrows the foremost coffin; it is broken, and the body is exposed-its white shroud flaps upon the mud. This has occurred once, I know; and how much oftener, I know not. So Gaiters pioneers his party to the nearest undertaker for repairs, and we follow the triumphant procession to the church-yard. The minister there meets it, holding his white handkerchief most closely to his nose: the mourners imitate him, sick and sorrowful. Your toe sticks in a bit of carrion, as we pass near the grave and seek the sexton. He is a pimpled man, who moralizes much; but his morality is maudlin. He is drunk. He is accustomed to antagonize the "spirits" of the dead with spirits from the "Pig and Whistle." Here let the séance end.

At home again, let us remark upon a striking fact. Those poor creatures whom we saw in sorrow by the grave, believed that they were sowing flesh to immortality-and so they were. They did not know that they were also sowing coffee. By a trustworthy informant, I am taught that of the old coffin-wood dug up out of the crowded church-yards, a large quantity that is not burned, is dried and ground; and that ground coffee is therewith adulterated in a wholesale manner. It communicates to cheap coffee a good color; and puts Body into it, there can be no doubt of that. It will be a severe blow to the trade in British coffees if intramural interment be forbidden. We shall be driven to depend upon distant planters for what now can be produced in any quantity at home.

Remember the largeness of the interests involved. Within the last thirty years, a million and a half of corpses have been hidden under ground, in patches, here and there, among the streets of London. This pasturage we have enjoyed from our youth up, and it is threatened now to put us off our feed.

I say no more, for better arguments than these can not be urged on behalf of the maintenance of City grave-yards. Possibly these may not prevail. Yet never droop. Nevertheless, without despairing, take a house in the vicinity of such a garden of the dead. If our lawgivers should fear the becoming neighborly with Dante's Cordelier, and therefore absolutely interdict more burials in London, still you are safe. They shall not trample on the graves that are. We can agitate, and we will agitate successfully against their asphalte. Let the City be mindful of its old renown; let Vestries rally round Sir Peter Laurie, and there may be yet secured to you, for seven years to come, an atmosphere which shall assist in making Home Unhealthy.

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