“The simplest urn ever made for the ashes of a Roman soldier is far more beautiful than the costly funeral trappings used in the most imposing burial pageant of modern times. Of urns of a more ambitious kind, the variety and beauty are often remarkable, as may be seen in our national and various private collections. It would be a gain to art if some of the money spent on coffins, which rot unseen in the earth, were devoted to such urns, which do not decay, and which might be placed in the light of day, and perhaps teach a lesson in art as well as bear a record.” And the _Medical Herald_ declares:— “An urn of granite, alabaster, malachite, or one of the precious metals, with the life-sized statue of great men placed in the halls of state, would much more befittingly express the state’s regard, and preserve and perpetuate the grateful tribute a Christian people would pay their memories, than any number of columns and shafts reared in cemeteries, which must in time be demolished.” Which is the more æsthetic, a small heap of pure, pearl-white ashes, or a grim skeleton? Certainly those who have seen a decomposing body, or human remains in the state of adipocere, would not call them æsthetic. Contrast with the ghastly skeleton, now commonly employed as an illustration of death, the representation of death by the ancients,—the boy with the inverted torch. Which is the more refined? The strong tombs, of such a grandeur and beauty—proof against the gnawing teeth of time—mortuary monuments,—as we shall not be able to leave to our offspring, testify to the pious veneration for the dead of the ancients. I need but remind you of the grand pyramids, the extensive necropolis at Thebes, the mausoleums and columbaria of the Via Appia in Rome, to cause you to perceive the truth of my statement. The ancients thought of the dead as being turned into shades; when we think of them we imagine rattling skeletons. The stupid and disgusting glorification of the skeleton did not originate with Christ; it is a product of the Middle Ages, as are the many tales of witches and ghosts that are related, especially in connection with churchyards, and still cling to them to-day. The cremationists of to-day, who propose to substitute a decent æsthetic and sanitary mode of disposal of the dead for the present harmful and loathsome custom of inhumation, are repulsed, met by sentimental objections, are even called monsters without religion, without reverence for the dead. But the apostles of incineration are as far removed from striving to suppress and murder such sacred feelings as is Dan from Beersheba. On the contrary, they believe that cremation is far more conducive to a pious veneration for the dead than interment. What would you rather look upon, that horrible remnant of mortality, for which, as Bossuet says, “there has been found no name in any human language,” or the innocuous, pearly ash in the memorial urn of marble, alabaster, or one of the precious metals?