Four thousand human beings die every hour; and only by that swift
and certain method can the vast mass of decaying matter which,
while decaying, gives off the most subtle and searching poisons,
be resolved with the elements without injury or risk to any one. So
convinced has the French Government become of the evils of burial
that it has patronized and encouraged one M. Bonneau, who proposes
that instead of a great city having its neighbouring cemeteries,
it should be provided with a building called The Sarcophagus,
occupying an elevated situation, to which the bodies of rich and
poor should be conveyed, and there reduced to ashes by a powerful
furnace. And then M. Bonneau, Frenchman all over, suggests that
the ashes of our friends might be preserved in a tasteful manner;
the funeral urn, containing these ashes, 'replacing on our consoles
and mantelpieces the ornaments of bronze clocks and china vases now
found there.' Our author, having shown that burning would save us
from the dangers of burying, concludes his treatise by a careful
description of the manner in which he would carry out the burning
process. And certainly his plan contains as little to shock one as
may be, in carrying out a system necessarily suggestive of violence
and cruelty. There is nothing like the repulsiveness of the Hindoo
burning, only half carried out, or even of Mr. Trelawney's furnace
for burning poor Shelley. I do not remember to have lately read
anything more ghastly and revolting than the entire account of
Shelley's cremation. It says much for Mr. Trelawney's nerves, that
he was able to look on at it; and it was no wonder that it turned
Byron sick, and that Mr. Leigh Hunt kept beyond the sight of it.
I intended to have quoted the passage from Mr. Trelawney's book,
but I really cannot venture to do so. But it is right to say that
there were very good reasons for resorting to that melancholy mode
of disposing of the poet's remains, and that Mr. Trelawney did all