The Rambler.

PART XXXI.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CATHOLIC FUNERALS

1

11

22

57

73

BRIEF NOTICES OF SOME WRITERS OF THE ENGLISH FRANCIS-

CAN PROVINCE SINCE THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION

REVIEWS: THE MIRACULOUS LIFE OF THE SAINTS.-The

Life of St. Frances of Rome, Foundress of the Oblates of

Tor di Specchi; with an Introduction on Christian Mys-

ticism. By the Viscount M. T. de Bussière.

CARDINAL PACCA'S MEMOIRS.-Historical Memoirs of Cardi-

nal Pacca. Translated by Sir George Head.

ROSSI ON THE CHRISTIAN INSCRIPTIONS OF ROME.-L'Iscrizione

della Statua ristabilita di Nicomaco Flaviano Seniore. Di-

chiarata da G. B. de Rossi

HANMER ON SUBMISSION TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.-Submis-

sion to the Catholic Church. By A. J. Hanmer, B.A.. 76

SHORT NOTICES.-Father Newman's Lectures at the London

Oratory on certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in sub-

mitting to the Catholic Church. Illuminated Altar-

Cards. Dr. Murray's Letters on the Philosophy of Plain

Speaking. Compitum, Vol. IV.-The Morality of Trac-

tarianism, a Letter from One of the People to One of the

Clergy. Mr. Marshall's General Report on Roman Catho-
lic Schools for the year 1849.-Dr. Wiseman's Papal and
Royal Supremacies contrasted.-Hungary and the Hun-
garian Struggle, by Mr. T. G. Clark.-Brownson's Quar-
terly Review. Rev. P. Cooper's Anglican Church the
Creature and Slave of the State.-Sanitation, the means
of Health.-Père de Lantage's Catéchisme de la Foi et

VOL. VI.

B

-

des Moeurs Chrétiennes.-Histoire de Sainte Cecile, by

Dom Prosper Gueranger.-Bittleston's Two Letters to

an Anglican Clergyman of the High-Church Party.-Con-

version d'une Famille Protestante, par Mde. Camille L.
-Rev. Dr. Pise's Christianity and the Church

ECCLESIASTICAL REGISTER.-Allocution of Pius IX. at the Se-

cret Consistory of May 20, 1850.-Canonisation of F.

Peter Claver, S. J.-New Churches.-St. Mary's, Clap-

ham

PAGE

80

85

To Correspondents.

We cannot undertake to return rejected communications.

All communications must be postpaid. Communications respecting

Advertisements must be addressed to the publishers, Messrs. BURNS and

LAMBERT.

The Rambler,

A CATHOLIC JOURNAL AND REVIEW.

VOL. VI.

JULY 1850.

PART XXXI.

CATHOLIC FUNERALS.

THE Protestant world is just now busied with an appropriate occupation: the dead are burying their dead. In other words, an extensive movement is in progress on the subject of the fittest manner of interring the great English nation. The Board of Health has made its long-promised report on the subject of intramural interment, and has propounded in it "a general scheme for extramural sepulture. This interesting document, one of the most important public papers that has been submitted to the country for many years, is now before us. The Government also has taken up the matter, and has already brought forward a measure on the subject. Surely, then, it is the duty of Catholics to place themselves in advance of the times, and to turn their attention to the subject of cemeteries and funerals; not merely from sanatory, but from religious considerations. While if we can compel the public to see that the Catholic Church looks upon the interment of the dead as an act of true Christian communion, and that instead of handing over the corpse of the pauper to the parish overseer to be buried by contract, she provides as decorously and as religiously for it as for that of the noble, we shall afford a fresh clue to lead all thinking men to the true Church. We remember the case of a poor person, who, seeing the corpse of a poor Catholic carried to the grave covered by a real Catholic pall, felt such a desire to have that pall and those affecting ceremonies used at her funeral, that she was led to examine into Catholic doctrine, and received the grace of God to embrace it.

To shew that since the national apostacy of England, Protestantism has not been able to provide for the decent interment of the dead, we need look to the metropolis alone.

And not to leave ourselves open to suspicion of exaggeration, we shall quote only from the Report of the Board of Health.

"Estimating," says the Report," the duration of a simple generation at thirty years, there must have been interred in the small space of 218 acres-the area of all the graveyards in the metropolis-in the last generation, a million and a half of dead bodies. . . . The graveyards of London are still the plague-spots of its population. The putrid drainage from them pollutes its wells, seethes beneath its dwellings, and poisons its atmosphere; and some parts of the metropolis are still honeycombed with deposits of the putrescent remains of millions of its citizens, just as with cess-pools, and other abominations." A calculation made by Dr. Lyon Playfair, and quoted by the commissioners, estimates the amount of the gases evolved annually from the decomposition of 1117 corpses per acre, which is very far short of the number actually interred in the metropolitan graveyards, at not less than 55,261 cubic feet therefore, as 52,000 interments take place annually in the metropolis, according to the ratio, the amount of gases emitted is equal to 2,572,850 cubic feet. The whole of this, however, beyond what is absorbed by the soil, must pass into the water below, or into the atmosphere above. What, then, must be the state of the air that is breathed, or the condition of the water that is drunk, by the denizens of this metropolis? "Yet such," we quote again, "is the cupidity of the Church, the unscrupulousness of the metropolitan undertakers, and, it must be added, the practical supineness of the authorities to whom the whole question of graveyards has been delegated by the State, that at this very moment there are further burials going on in some of the most frightfully gorged Golgothas of this metropolis.' Such are the abuses that meet our eyes when we regard the question in a sanatory point of view; but others, not less portentous, strike us when we turn to its religious aspect. A contemporary has recently pointed out that it is no uncommon thing to see churchyard earth carted on to the churchwarden's fields, and skulls set up for a mark at which boys may throw stones: and we know of one instance at least in which a Catholic priest has often had to read the funeral service over poor deceased Catholics in a pauper cemetery, where, at stated intervals, fragments of coffins, but a short while in the ground, with portions of flesh still adhering to them, were burned at night in a remote corner of the graveyard.

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, when she has the ordering of her cemeteries and funerals, keeps prominently