Under the practice of intramural interments--that practice which the new law supersedes, the principle of temporary tenure has been made to cover all manner of brutal abuses. Graves have been disturbed--within metropolitan churchyards and other burying-grounds, in which the transformations of decay had not half accomplished themselves; and public decency has been outraged--here, in the centre of civilisation, by the spectacle of human remains being tossed about like offal. It is one chief advantage of extramural sepulture, that, while the inevitable decay of the dead will be removed from the vicinity of the living, and the latter will no longer have their atmosphere tainted by this hideous contamination; so likewise for the dead--however humble, that in this new resting-place, room will be allotted them with no indecent stint; that the dwellings and market-places of the living will no longer hem them in, grudging their narrow requirements; that their return to dust will be respected, as beseems the last phase of mortal existence; and that, against any desecration of their repose, there will be given every security which piety and affection can demand. There may be difference of opinion as to the precise time when a grave can with truth and decency be thought to have become distenanted. The rapidity of decay varies in so extraordinary a degree according to soil, that some inhumations are almost equivalent to embalming; while, in other cases, the process is comparatively rapid. Only experience of a particular soil will enable you to know with precision, what length of tenure is needed there for the purposes of interment to accomplish themselves; but on general principles one can approximate pretty nearly to the truth. Assuming the site of your Cemetery to have been selected with due regard to those qualities of soil which determine the differences adverted to, I think it unlikely that any adult grave can properly be re-opened within twenty years[93] of the time when interment shall last have occurred in it. Very long within this time, however, all soft textures of the body would have completed their decay. Remains of the coffin and of the skeleton--materials insusceptible of putrefaction, would alone occupy the grave, and with gradual crumbling blend themselves in the soil. Not till this final disintegration of the skeleton is complete--not till the identity of its different elements is destroyed, can the first occupant of a grave be fairly deemed to have abdicated his tenure. From this time only, can his interest in it be held as having reverted to the public, for whoever next may claim a similar usufruct of the ground.