“Yet e’en these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.” But there could be few notions more false. Gravestones have often enough been “moved about to give more appearance of room,” and oftener still cleared away altogether, while the bodies beneath have been cast out almost as soon as they were buried; and unfortunately there are many country churchyards now which are terribly overcrowded. A short time after the death of Lawrence Sterne his admirers collected money to put a monument on his grave in St. George’s burial-ground, Bayswater Road. It was erected in what was supposed to be about the right position—no one could point to the exact spot where the body lay. Thirdly we have the idea of the hungering grave, which is carried to a ridiculous point in this passage from “The Wonderful Yeare 1603, wherein is shewed the picture of London lying sicke of the Plague.”—“Let us look forth, and try what consolation rises with the sun. Not any, not any; for, before the jewel of the morning be fully set in silver, hundred hungry graves stand gaping; and every one of them (as at a breakfast) hath swallowed downe ten or eleven lifeless carcases. Before dinner, in the same gulfe, are twice so many more devoured. And, before the Sun takes his rest, those numbers are doubled.” [Illustration: SHEEP IN THE SAVOY CHURCHYARD ABOUT 1825.] Now the grave is not hungry, and the earth does not want dead bodies; it is better without them. Yet, strangely enough, there is a certain benefit to be derived from a moderate supply, and the most advanced cremationists advocate the use of the few remaining ashes as manure for some kinds of farm lands. Sir Henry Thompson, a cremationist worthy of every honour, has referred to the great increase there would be in the fish supply if burial at sea were generally practised, a plan approved of by some _anti_-cremationists. We have seen that churchyard water has been drunk for generations, and very bad it is. Churchyard poultry and churchyard mutton are also common enough, many a poor parson being glad to earn a few pounds in the year by allowing sheep to graze among the graves. This is all very well in some country places, but it used to be practised in London, and sheep have been actually killed by swallowing with the grass the poisonous products of the overfilled ground. In the Charterhouse graveyard there are some magnificent wall fruit trees, such as are seldom seen in crowded towns; one of the Stepney pest-fields became a market-garden; while breweries and burial-grounds seem to be closely associated with each other.