d Chemistry, and all that sort of thing--stopped here. The
mere consideration that burial in the heart of cities is unhealthy,
would but lead to extramural interment, to which our only
objection--though even that is no very trifling one--is that it
would diminish mortality, and consequently our trade. But this
Science--confound it!--shows that the dead do not remain permanently
in their coffins, even when the sextons of metropolitan graveyards
will let them. It not only informs Londoners that they breathe and
drink the deceased; but it reveals how the whole of the defunct party
is got rid of, and turned into gases, liquids, and mould. It exposes
the way in which all animal matter as it is called in chemical
books--is dissolved, evaporates, and disappears; and is ultimately, as
I may say, eaten up by Nature, and goes to form parts of plants, and
of other living creatures. So that, if gentlemen really wanted to be
interred with the remains of their ancestors, it would sometimes
be possible to comply with their wishes only by burying them with a
quantity of mutton--not to say with the residue of another quadruped
than the sheep, which often grazes in churchyards. Science, in
short, is hammering into people's heads truths which they have been
accustomed merely to gabble with their mouths--that all flesh is
indeed grass, or convertible into it; and not only that the human
frame does positively turn to dust, but into a great many things
besides. Now, I say, that when they become really and truly convinced
of all this; when they know and reflect that the body cannot remain
any long time in the grave which it is placed in; I am sadly afraid
that they will think twice before they will spend from thirty to
several hundred pounds in merely putting a corpse into the ground to
decompose.

The only hope for us if these scientific views become general, is,
that embalming will be resorted to; but I question if the religious
feelings of the country will approve of a practice which certainly
seems rather like an attempt to arrest a decree of Providence; and
would, besides, be very expensive. Hero I am reminded of another
danger, to which our prospects are exposed. It is that likely to arise
from serious parties, in consequence of growing more enlightened,
thinking consistently with their religious principles, instead of
their religion being a mere sentimental kind of thing which they never
reason upon. We often, you know, gentlemen, ove