Leaving every other consideration aside, does it not strike every reader that the period allowed for rest in the common grave is much too short? Many bodies are dug up in good preservation when thus brutally disturbed, and there are persons who can testify to the horror they have experienced when called on, by some untoward circumstance, to be present at these impious exhumations. I shall not add to it by overdrawing this sufficiently painful picture; it does not become the pen of a priest to color with such ghastly elements. My object is simply to state plain facts--to be exact, and not leave room for the slightest contradiction. Arguments have been advanced in favor of the good influence of this supreme misery of the common grave. It is hoped that such an end will be avoided, and that it will carry a lesson with it--a horror for relying on public charity; but it nevertheless deals a direct blow at every feeling of respect for kith and kin. Is not the grief caused by eternal partings deep enough, without being increased by our acquiescence in the total abandonment of the tomb? Any one in authority who could suppress the common grave, and give every poor man separate burial--any one who, having done this, could render such a tomb inviolable for a reasonable term of years, would confer an immense blessing on Parisians. When M. Haussmann gave out the project of a large burial-ground at Méry-sur-Oise, it met with opposition in all quarters. It was alleged that to send corpses out of Paris by special railway conveyances would be considered disrespectful to the dead. But, we would inquire, is the present system of interment in the common grave calculated to inspire respect? The distance of a few miles, of even a few leagues, would be nothing compared with the privilege of a separate tombstone over a separate grave; and it would be much wiser to have remote cemeteries, provided they were hospitable. This question of the common grave not only interests those who die within the hospitals; it is also of importance to the indigent wherever they die in misery--a state many have fallen into since the war and the _Commune_. The above disclosures are certainly very melancholy, and yet I have only described the case of the more fortunate among the poor--of those who have, after all, a hallowed spot to rest in after death. There are some to whom even this boon is denied. The interests of science and those of families being here antagonistic, it is necessary to quote a few figures: On the 1st January, 1867, the number of sick in the Paris hospitals was 6,243. In the course of that year, the number was increased by 90,375; total, 96,618. Out of this total, 79,897 left the hospitals cured; 10,045 had died. There remained, therefore, on the 1st January of the following year, 6,676 sick persons. In 1869, the number of invalids in the hospitals was 93,355, out of which 82,283 left cured; 10,429 had died on the 31st December of the same year.