“We are told that respect for the dead urges to burial as against cremation, but many are now very keenly feeling the reverse of this. They can bring the mind to bear the liberation of the body by one swift act of disintegration and purifying, but cannot overcome the shrinking from subjecting it to the foul and lingering processes of the grave--or, perchance, to the horror of recovering consciousness in the grave.” We take the occasion, however, to express on general grounds our cordial adherence to the cremation movement. Mr. Hopps further states one of the strongest arguments thus:-- “Respect for the living, too, is an urgent motive. The highest authorities tell us that the air we breathe and the water we drink are often contaminated by the emanations of graves. It cannot be right that London, for instance, with all its inevitable impurities, should add to its foulnesses that of trying to live in company with thousands upon thousands of decaying bodies in its very midst.” To dispose of the dead decently, and at the same time without injury to the living, is one of the first obligations of civilised communities, and cremation seems best calculated to fulfil the conditions. Zymotic diseases, such as typhus, scarlatina, and the plague, have been traced in certain instances to emanations from burial-grounds. Dr. Charles Creighton, in his “History of Epidemics in Britain,” vol. i., p. 336, says:--“The grand provocative of plague was no obvious nuisance above ground, but the loading of the soil, generation after generation, with an immense quantity of cadaveric matters, which were diffused in the pores of the ground under the feet of the living, to rise in emanations more deadly in one season than in another.” It would seem from these experiences as though there was quite as much truth as poetry in Shakespeare when he said, “Grave-yards yawn, and hell itself breathes out contagion on the world.” Before many years it is not unlikely that cremation in this as in some other countries will be made obligatory in cases of death from all infectious diseases. As the late Bishop of Manchester observed, “The earth is not for the dead, but for the living.” During the thirteen years ending 1890 there were three hundred and three thousand four hundred and sixty-six deaths from cholera in Japan, and all the bodies of these persons were cremated. In India, as we have already shown, cremation is practised under most of the religious systems, as it is believed that the soul is not free from its earthly tenement until the body is reduced to ashes. The method of burning is slow and cumbersome as compared with that adopted in Europe; but during the author’s last visit to Ceylon, in the early part of the present year (1896), there was some talk of establishing a crematorium. [THE LONDON BURIAL-GROUNDS.]