II. The Londoner’s Garden. Brick walls do not secrete air. It comes in through your doors and windows, from the streets and alleys in your neighborhood; it comes in without scraping its feet, and goes down your throat, unwashed, with small respect for your gentility. You must look abroad, therefore, for some elements of an unwholesome home: and when, sitting at home, you do so, it is a good thing if you can see a burial-ground—one of “God’s gardens,” which our city cherishes. Now, do not look up with a dolorous face, saying, “Alas! these gardens are to be taken from us!” Let agitators write and let Commissioners report, let Government nod its good-will, and although all the world may think that our London burial-grounds are about to be incontinently jacketed in asphalte, and that we ourselves, when dead, are to be steamed off to Erith—we are content: at present this is only gossip.(1) On one of the lowest terraces of hell, says Dante, he found a Cordelier, who had been dragged thither by a logical demon, in defiance of the expostulations of St. Francis. The sin of that monk was a sentence of advice for which absolution had been received before he gave it: “Promise much, and perform little.” In the hair of any Minister’s head, and of every Commissioner’s head, we know not what “black cherubim” may have entwined their claws. There is hope, while there is life, for the old cause. But if those who have authority to do so really have determined to abolish intramural burial, let us call upon them solemnly to reconsider their verdict. Let them ponder what follows. Two or three years ago, a book, promulgating notions upon spiritual life, was published in London by the Chancellor of a certain place across the Channel. It was a clever book; and, among other matter, broached a theory. “_Our souls,_” the Rev. Chancellor informed us, “_consist of the essence, extract, or gas contained in the human body_;” and, that he might not be vague, he made special application to a chemist, who “added some important observations of his own respecting the corpse after death.” But we must decorate a great speculation with the ornamental words of its propounder.