There is now already a new literature, prose as well as poetry, accumulating. The “Cremazione dei cadaveri” already has its poets—principally in Italy. Professor Giambattista Polizzi of Girgenti dedicated (in March, 1873) a poem on cineration to Signora Emilia Salsi when her husband, Doctor Giuseppi Salsi, died and was cremated. He praised incineration as the best mode to dispose of the dead, and to preserve the remains of the departed. In January, 1874, Civelli’s printing house at Milan, Italy, turned out 22 stanzas on incineration, in the Milanese dialect. The anonymous author is a patron of cremation. Dr. Moretti of Cannero published an excellent poem on cremation in the _Annali di Chimica_ of 1872. A German author, writing under the pseudonym of “Dranmor,” sent forth some very good verses on the same subject, as did also the celebrated Dr. Justinus Kerner. Mr. William Eassie laments:— “It is a matter of regret that those of our own poets who have been in favor of burning the dead did not enshrine their proclivities in verse. Southey, for instance, wrote that the custom of interment ‘makes the idea of a dead friend more unpleasant. We think of the grave, corruption, and worms; burning would be better.’ But he left us no poetry on the subject.” The objections to cineration put forward by the sentimentalists are really of no consequence at all; they are far too trivial to be worth even only superficial consideration. I have only mentioned them, because I am aware of the strong hold that sentiment has on most people, and because they allowed of a comparison between burial and cremation, which is decidedly in favor of the latter. Dr. E. J. Bermingham of New York City hits the nail on the head by saying:— “We believe the abhorrence entertained by many, of cremation, depends to a very great extent on the universal tendency of individuals and nations to resent any interference with established customs, to reject any innovation simply because it is an innovation.” Sentimental objection to incineration resolves into this: We are the slaves of custom. We love to walk in the old wornout paths, and when some one discovers a new way that is much shorter, and by which the destination is reached much sooner, we are loathe to use it. First only a few adopt it, then more and more travel over its surface, until finally the old path becomes obsolete. To what an extent people are governed by their time-honored customs was illustrated by the ancient historian Herodotus (see Muses, Book III, chap. 88), as follows:—