The Ecclesiastical Commissioners can grant, in certain cases, a faculty permitting the erection of schools in churchyards, especially when the grounds have been closed under the Burials Act; and never shall I forget a school of this description in one of our largest cities. Old burial-grounds can be converted to more common secular purposes under certain restrictions, as may be witnessed almost every day in London. In such cases the remains must be decorously removed to some consecrated ground, after due notice to the relatives. An example of this may be observed at the present moment at the demolished church of St. Antholin, London; only in this case the remains have not been carted away as usual to the City of London Cemetery at Ilford, but have been placed in a monster vault constructed at the base of the tower, which is the only part of the church that is to remain. In this vault have been placed over 200 chests, each containing the contents of a grave. If the closed burial-ground be taken under the Land Clauses Act for public improvements, and converted into sites for building, the freeholder obtains the sum at which it was valued previously to the passing of the Act, and the building may proceed. In the City of London the Commissioners may, with the Bishop's consent, arrange with the churchwardens for the appropriation of any disused burial-ground. Sometimes, as in the case of the Bunhill Fields ground, the space may be laid out and preserved as an open space by a corporation, and a burial board may do the like with all ancient graveyards within their jurisdiction. The authorities, however, I believe, provide that, in burial-places so closed, vertical tombstones shall not be thrown down and made use of as a paving, and, as a general rule, the growth of grass is encouraged for sanitary purposes. I have given an account of the past and present state of the burial laws, because it was necessary to do so in order to estimate the position which any better system of dealing with our dead will occupy. It cannot be said that no pains have been taken to lessen the horrors of the tomb, for I have taken the trouble to make a list of the proposed improvements in the paraphernalia of death which have appeared[103] since 1781, and everything seems to have been considered. From 1781 to 1825 the main thing studied was security against the rifling of the grave; and then on to 1871 followed plans for all kinds of coffins in stone, marble, granite, slate, porcelain, earthenware, bitumen, asphalte, paper, peat, india-rubber, iron, and glass. Glass has been the favourite material, just as it was in old Italy, where it was mostly selected to enshrine the ashes collected from the pyre. It is melancholy to peruse these strivings after the impossible, and to see what fond but unavailing attempts have been made to rob inhumation of its terrors. [103] Patent Office Records. CHAPTER IV. DANGERS OF OUR SYSTEM OF BURIAL.