[197] When the body has to be conveyed for a very long distance to the place of cremation, it might be necessary to practise some simple method of embalming, and this any surgeon is capable of performing. In the case of the English lady who was recently taken to Dresden, Mr. Garstin of London was resorted to. [198] There is no doubt that public mortuaries will soon be established throughout the country, as in some parts of the Continent and in some large English towns now. Sanitary science calls aloud for their establishment generally, and the practice of permitting the dead to remain in the habitable rooms of the poor has proved very repugnant to decency and inimical to public health. [199] The princes of Tartary use this mountain silk, as it is called, even now. [200] Frazer. [201] Wanklyn. The English and the German machinery for the reduction of the body to ashes vary in a few particulars, but the general construction is the same, as will have been perceived. In one Dresden arrangement the body is lowered into a receiver below, and the idea of interment is thus in a manner preserved.[202] In the English arrangement this is otherwise, and the coffin is made to gradually slide into the receiver, like a ship launched into water. The anguish induced by the moment of departure is in this way somewhat ameliorated, as there is no noise of lowering-machinery to grate upon the ear. At certain appointed words in our beautiful funeral service--for instance, 'ashes to ashes'--a curtain might be partially withdrawn, and the body, encased in a suitable shell, would gravitate slowly into the chamber of the apparatus, which would then immediately close noiselessly; to be opened only after the due reduction of the body. The utmost privacy would be insured, and no strange eyes could gaze upon it[203] during the period of incineration. The funeral service could also be made to occupy the whole of the time necessary for sublimation if it were so desired, or a eulogy or other reference to the departed might form the subject of a discourse. The ashes could afterwards be collected, and reverentially placed in an urn,[204] or other suitable receptacle, and conveyed to their last resting-place. Plate III. represents a view of a mortuary chapel, such as would probably be required in a Christian cemetery; and the scene there represented will serve to show how completely decorous the procedure would be.[205] And one may here remark that the great advances made by science can nowhere better be evidenced than by a comparison between the modern and ancient systems of cremation. However well disguised in beautiful language--as, for instance, by Bulwer in the 'Last Days of Pompeii'--the barbarity of the method practised in classical times will be sensibly felt in the background. [202] See Plate I.