was complete without a “moot” or “dance,” and thus proficiency in the two chief branches of legal education could hardly fail to be secured—the great aim of such education being to render the student not only a learned lawyer, but a polished gentleman, worthy of the pure blood and “three descents” which were required to qualify him for admission.
Of the old curriculum, the eating of so many dinners in hall, is almost the only remnant which has been preserved to our practical matter-of-fact days. The benchers are no longer readers, except in name, the task of lecturing being devolved upon regular professors. The “moots,” and dances, and revels are things of the past, and the benchers no longer issue edicts on the cut either of the hair or trousers of their subjects. If the process of change continues in the same direction as hitherto, we may look to see even the time-honoured “eating of terms” abolished, and the Council of Legal Education exercising all the prerogatives of the benchers in regard to the admission of students and government of the Inns.
LONDON CEMETERIES.
“Hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito, neve urito” was one of those wise old laws inscribed by the Romans on their twelve tables, but which has been permitted to fall into abeyance for well nigh two thousand years. It was but the other day Englishmen were induced to decide in favour of Life as against Death, and to decree that henceforward the living and the dead should no longer jostle against each other in our great cities. The necessity for living men is Health,—for the dead Silence and Repose.
As one looks back upon the struggle which was so stoutly maintained, and for so long a time, in behalf of the Ghoul interest, it is difficult to repress a smile at the arguments and assertions which were then thought not unworthy of serious discussion. Parent-Duchatelet maintained with considerable fervour that the true Temple of Hygeia was a dissecting-room stuffed full of human remains in an advanced stage of decomposition. The unfavoured many who could not obtain admission to these more choice and desirable spots were not, however, without their resources. As long as there was a chantier d’équarrissage, or a dépôt de vidange forthcoming,—in other words, a receptacle for dead horses or night soil—afflicted humanity was not without its Madeira or Torquay. The emanations arising from decomposing animal or even vegetable remains constituted the grand specific. If an occasional sniff at these in an amateur way did not suffice to restore calmness to the fluttering pulse, or coolness to the hot temples and freshness to the parched mouth, a man had nothing to do but to turn undertaker’s man, or grave-digger, and it would go well with him. Was not the grave-digger in “Hamlet” a stouter, a more cheerful, a more aged man than the hypochondriac prince? The conclusion is obvious.
Of all this there is an end. Beyond an occasional fight before Committees of the Houses of Parliament about Clergy Dues, no vestiges of the old strife remain. We are at last content to remove the remains of those who were dearest to us in life from the hearts and centres of our great towns, and there to leave them far away from the hubbub and turmoil of our daily business. As far as they are concerned, we know well enough that turmoil and hubbub can disquiet them no more, but yet “he is not dead, but sleepeth” is part of the nation’s faith, and well is it that it should be so. Stamp this belief out, and the humanities, the affections, and the joys which make life a pleasant thing would quickly follow. It is impossible to disconnect the link which unites those poor mouldering relics of what once was dear to us from the short past and the long future of man’s life. Therefore let them not be committed to the earth in cities—after life’s fitful fever, let them sleep well.
The old Puritan objection against our burial service for the dead was, that “in burying the dead we killed the living,” although by this they did not mean to express more than their objection to the delays in cold damp burying-grounds. Just in the same way and for the same reason it was said that the Great Duke took with him many of his old companions in arms, because they were kept waiting in St. Paul’s for so many hours at his last Review. No doubt every year hundreds and hundreds of—especially old—persons are killed by their attendance at funerals, but what is this to the hecatombs which were annually offered up as victims to the shades as a consequence of the practice of intramural interments? A mere statement of the numbers annually committed to the earth within the metropolitan limits should be sufficient to suggest the nature and amount of the danger to which we were exposed. The subjoined extract is reprinted from the Report of the Committee which took evidence upon the subject of interment in towns in the year 1843. It seems scarcely needful to add, that the evil would have become far more intense in the course of the last eighteen years but for the interference of our Legislators. The population of London has Increased in the interval comprised within the limits of 1843-61, and the deaths have increased as well. Here, however, is an account of matters as they stood in 1843. “In the metropolis are spaces of ground which do not exceed 203 acres, closely surrounded by the abodes of the living, layer upon layer, each consisting of a population numerically equivalent to a large army of 20,000 adults, and nearly 30,000 youths and children are every year very imperfectly interred. Within the period of the existence of the present generation upwards of a million of dead must have been interred in those same spaces.” Had the practice been allowed to continue without a check, the question would soon have resolved itself into the very simple one of “Is London to be the city of the Living, or the city of the Dead?” In the long run the dead would surely have gained the upper hand. The living, unless they had recourse to expedients which would have been shocking to the common feelings of humanity, must in the end have given way before the grim antagonists who would poison the water and the air. The evil was a cumulative one, as the varia-