“When the ear heard,” &c. Handel. “I have set God always before me,” &c. Blake. “The souls of the righteous,” &c. Dupuis. “Hear my prayer,” &c. Kent. On the burial of esteemed members of the cathedral choirs, the other choristers have sung the highest and most solemn of the church music. § 182. Where the circumstances described, in respect to the Protestant population, have prevented compliance with the popular desire for hymns or anthems to be sung or sermons to be spoken at the burial at the parochial churches in London, interment has been purchased for the express purpose of obtaining them at the trading burial grounds. And yet it may be submitted that the desire is consistent with the earliest recognized practice for all classes,[39] and that a system of national cemeteries would in proportion to the numbers interred in them, furnish valuable cases as examples for its beneficial exercise, and must, to a great extent, prevent the misapplication of the service to such cases as have apparently caused it to fall in public esteem. “The honour,” says Hooker, “generally due unto all men maketh a decent interring of them to be convenient, even for very humanity’s sake. And therefore so much as is mentioned in the burial of the widow’s son, the carrying him forth upon a bier and accompanying him to the earth, hath been used even amongst infidels, all men accounting it a very extreme destitution not to have at least this honour due to them.” * * * * “Let any man of reasonable judgment examine whether it be more convenient for a company of men, as it were, in a dumb show to bring a corpse to a place of burial, there to leave it, covered with earth, and so end, or else to have the exsequies devoutly performed with solemn recitals of such lectures, psalms, and prayers, as are purposely framed for the stirring up of men’s minds into a careful consideration of their estate both here and hereafter.