The lady in whose journal these lines were written lies buried in the Campo Santo at Milan, with the following inscription on her tomb; _Priez pour une jeune Française que la mort a frappée à vingt ans, comme elle allait, après un voyage de huit mois avec un epoux chéri, revoir son enfant, son pere et sa mere, qui venaient joyeux au-devant d'elle._ Her husband wished to have her remains burnt, in conformity to her own opinion respecting the disposal of the dead, and to his own feelings at the time, that he might have carried her ashes to his own country, and piously have preserved them there, to weep over them, and bequeath them to his son; _mais les amis qui m'entouraient_, he says, _combatterent mon desir, comme une inspiration insensée de la douleur._ There can be no doubt that our ghastly personification of Death has been derived from the practice of interment; and that of all modes in which the dead have ever been disposed of, cremation is in some respects the best. But this mode, were it generally practicable, would in common use be accompanied with more revolting circumstances than that which has now become the Christian usage. Some abominations however it would have prevented, and though in place of those superstitions which it precluded others would undoubtedly have arisen, they would have been of a less loathsome character. The Moors say that the dead are disturbed if their graves be trodden on by Christian feet; the Rabbis that they feel the worms devouring them. On the south side of the city of Erzeroom is a mountain called Eyerli, from the same likeness which has obtained for one of the English mountains the unpoetical name of Saddleback. The Turkish traveller Evlia Effendi saw on the top of this mountain a tomb eighty paces in length, with two columns marking the place of the head and of the feet. “I was looking on the tomb,” he says, “when a bad smell occurred very hurtfully to my nose, and to that of my servant who held the horses; and looking near, I then saw that the earth of the grave, which was greasy and black, was boiling, like gruel in a pan. I returned then, and having related my adventures in the evening in company with the Pashaw, Djaafer Effendi of Erzeroom, a learned man and an elegant writer, warned me not to visit the place again, for it was the grave of Balaam the son of Beor, who died an infidel, under the curse of Moses, and whose grave was kept always in this state by subterraneous fires.”