Amid a great number of particulars as to the burial customs of
various nations, we find mention made of an odd way in which the
natives of Thibet dignify their great people. They do not desecrate
such by giving them to the earth, but retain a number of sacred dogs
to devour them. Not less strange was the fancy of that Englishwoman,
a century or two back, who had her husband burnt to ashes, and
these ashes reduced to powder, of which she mixed some with all the
water she drank, thinking, poor heart-broken creature, that, thus
she was burying the dear form within her own.

In rare cases I have known of the parson or the churchwarden turning
his cow to pasture in the churchyard, to the sad desecration of the
place. It appears, however, that worse than this has been done, if
we may judge from the following passage quoted by Mrs. Stone:--

1540. Proceedings in the Court of Archdeaconry of Colchester, Colne
Wake. Notatur per iconimos dicte ecclesie yt the parson mysusithe
the churche-yard, for hogis do wrote up graves, and besse lie in
the porche, and ther the pavements he broke up and soyle the porche;
and ther is so mych catell yt usithe the church-yarde, yt is more
liker a pasture than a halowed place.

It is usual, it appears, in the southern parts of France, to erect
in the churchyard a lofty pillar, bearing a large lamp, which throws
its light upon the cemetery during the night. The custom began in
the twelfth or thirteenth century. Sometimes the lanterne des marts
was a highly ornamented chapel, built in a circular form, like the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, in which the dead lay
exposed to view in the days which preceded their interment: sometimes