The scheme has met with some enemies, and injudicious promoters of the system have not proved the least of them. The idea that it was sought to make it compulsory, was an unfortunate utterance. The notion of producing illuminating gas for general purposes from the combustion of the bodies was another mischievous idea.[1] Equally so was the proposal for the erection of a tall shaft in the cemetery grounds, where the gases could be seen consuming--something after the fashion, I suppose, of the twelfth century's _lanternes des morts_. The publication of crude and undigested fancies does more harm than good to the subject they are meant to benefit. [1] The original proposer of this scheme was M. Rudler, who proposed it to Dr. Caffe, of Paris, in 1857. It has been urged that the practice of burning the dead had its origin in a heathen religion, but it is not wise to accept the imputation. Let us take Greece for an example. All historians inform us that the people of ancient Greece practised inhumation. But when they did practise cremation, they nowhere associated the burning of the dead with the worship of the gods. And we are at liberty to argue from this fact that neither did the aboriginal peoples from whom they derived it, regard it as an act with which religion had aught to do, the story of Odin notwithstanding. And the reason why the Greeks did not practise it earlier, was doubtless simply because the bulk of the colonists came from countries where another system prevailed. Cecrops and Danaus, who were instrumental in colonising Athens and Argos, were Egyptians, and Cadmus, the founder of Thebes in Bœotia, was a Phœnician.[2] Neither of these nations burnt their dead, but practised another system of burial. [2] Jamieson. There can, I think, be little doubt that the burning of the dead was originally resorted to upon sanitary grounds, and as a means of protecting the living from the effects of corruption. Putridity was observed to be loathsome and dangerous, and it was found that the practice of burning, and that only, at once resolved the body into its first elements. In Scandinavia, the dead were disposed of by fire from the earliest recorded times, and the great antiquity of the custom amongst the Celtæ, Sarmatians, and neighbouring nations, has never been doubted.[3] It was practised in our islands also in pre-historic times. [3] _Ibid._