humiliating in such thoughts; the operations
of Nature are always admirable. But when the relics of humanity are
deliberately appropriated to such mechanical or scientific purposes
as we shall relate, before they have entirely lost their original (we
should say latest) form, then most men would look upon the act as
in some sort a desecration. With what holy horror would the ancient
Egyptians regard the economical uses to which their embalmed bodies were
appropriated a few centuries ago! In the words of Ambrose Pare, the
great surgeon of five French kings in the sixteenth century, is a full
account of the preparation and administration of "mummie,"--that is,
Egyptian mummies, powdered and made into pills and potions,--"to such
as have falne from high places or have beene otherwise bruised." The
learned physician enters his protest against the use of it, (which he
says is almost universal with the faculty,) as quite inefficacious and
disgusting. His disgust, however, arises principally from the fact that
the "mummie" prepared by the apothecaries must have been derived "from
the carcases of the basest people of Egypt; for the nobelmen and cheefe
of the province, so religiously addicted to the monuments of their
ancestors, would never suffer the bodyes of their friends and kindred to
be transported hither for filthy gaine and detested use."

If such traffic be base, what shall we say of some priests of Nicaragua,
who renovate their burial-grounds by exhuming the bones of the dead,
with the earth that surrounds them, and selling the mass to the
manufacturers of nitre? No sentiment of reverence for the sepulchres
of their fathers incites them to resist the inroads of foreign
pirates,--for they manufacture their fathers' bones into gunpowder.

Let us turn away from the revolting picture. The glimpses of Nature's
revolutions which we have enjoyed are more agreeable. We are no
advocates for any attempts of preserving the human body from
decomposition; that which will restore the beloved forms of friends
most readily to their primitive elements, and avert the possibility
of anything so dear remaining to excite our aversion or disgust, or
becoming a pestilential agent, we would cordially encourage. There can
be no doubt that use would soon render cremation as little disagreeable
to the feelings as consigning the precious remains to slow decay and
food for worms; and few will long be pained at the thought of mingling
at once with