It would not be fair to give the reader the impression that Walker was the first to speak of the unwholesome condition of the London graveyards. Here is a quotation from a sermon preached by Bishop Latimer in 1552: “The citizens of Naim had their burying-places without the city, which, no doubt, is a laudable thing; and I do marvel that London, being so great a city, hath not a burial-place without: for no doubt it is an unwholesome thing to bury within the city, especially at such a time, when there be great sicknesses, and many die together. I think verily that many a man taketh his death in St. Paul’s Churchyard, and this I speak of experience; for I myself, when I have been there on some mornings to hear the sermons, have felt such an ill-savoured, unwholesome savour, that I was the worse for it a great while after; and I think no less—but it is the occasion of great sickness and disease.” And from his time onwards allusions were made, in sermons and discourses, by ministers and physicians, to the dangers of contact with decaying animal substances. [Illustration: CHURCHYARD OF ST. ANN, SOHO, IN 1810.] To turn from London for a moment. It is stated in Roger’s “Social Life in Scotland” that when Queen Mary visited Dundee in 1594 she found that “the deid of the Naill burgh is buryit in the midst thereof, quhairin the common traffic of merchandise is usit, and that throw occasion of the said burial, pest, and other contagious sickness is engenderit.” The evil was remedied by granting to the burgh as a place of sepulchre the site of the Greyfriars Monastery. Sir Christopher Wren, when considering the question of the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, made some very wise remarks upon the question of intramural interments. He wished to see suburban cemeteries established, and burials in churches and churchyards discontinued, partly because he considered the constant raising of the level of a churchyard rendered the church damp and more liable to premature decay. But Wren’s plans for rebuilding the city were not carried out; they were approved by the King and Parliament, but disapproved by the Corporation; and this scheme of his respecting the practice of burial fell through with the rest. The churches were rebuilt on the old sites, the churchyards were again used, and the sites of several of those churches which were not rebuilt became additional burial-grounds for the parishes. And yet, in the return published in 1833, it is curious to find that only one place is described as being “very full of bodies,” the churchyard of St. John’s, Clerkenwell. There was no great desire on the part of those connected with the parishes to increase their burial accommodation.