There still remains to be noticed one practice connected with the public health, that requires some animadversion from the medical jurist—THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD IN THE MIDST OF POPULOUS TOWNS AND CITIES.—It is certainly extraordinary that a country which has long abjured the errors of the church of Rome, should still retain one of its most absurd superstitions, yet such is the fact in England, as it respects the Burial of the Dead in churches, and church-yards, and in cemeteries, situated in the very heart of our most populous cities.[152] If the health of the people be a primary object of legislation, there is no point which in the present advanced state of population calls more imperiously for its interference; the cemeteries of the metropolis are so crowded[153] that it becomes more difficult to find room for the dead than the living, and yet free as we boast ourselves to be from the prejudices and superstitions of our ancestors, we question whether there is any point upon which more popular clamour would be raised than that of changing the system of burial. It is difficult, in the first place, to overcome those feelings which originate in a principle amiable and useful in itself, however mistaken it may be in its practical applications. Nature appears to have implanted in all mankind a sentiment of veneration for the mortal remains of those whom living we have loved or respected; every nation, whether civilized or barbarous, has accordingly invented and practised some ceremony,[154] generally of a religious character, in the final disposal of the human corpse; it is however the duty of the state to guard the living from those evils to which an ill applied respect for the dead may be likely to subject them.