Some of the grandest buildings in the world have been tombs; such are the pyramids, the castle of St. Angelo, the tomb of Ctecilia Metella, and many temples scattered over Hindustan and other eastern countries. Thus, the respect paid by the living to the dead has preserved for the world many magnificent fruits of architectural genius and labor. A notion that the dead may require the things they have been fond of in life, has also preserved to the existing world many relics of the customs of past ages. The tombs of Egypt have supplied an immense quantity of them, which have taught the present age more of the manners of ancient nations than all the learned books that have been written. It is an awful remembrance, at the same time, that inanimate things were not all that the dead were expected to take with them. Herodotus tells us of favorite horses and slaves sacrificed at the holocaust of the dead chief. The same thing has been done in our own day in Ashantee. In many countries, the wives had the doom, or privilege, as it was thought, of departing with their husbands; and down to the present generation the practice has lived in full vigor in the Hindu sutti. Among the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, and many ancient nations, the dead were buried beyond the towns. The " stop, traveler!" was a usual memorandum on Roman tombs. In Christian countries, if the remains of the saint to whom a church was dedicated could be obtained—or any thing passing for the remains—they were buried near the altar in the choir. It became a prevalent desire to be buried near these saints. and the bodies of men eminent for their piety, or high iu rank, came thus to be buried in churches. The extension of the practice was the origin of churchyards. These, in crowded towns, became offensive and unhealthy. It can scarcely be said that this practice, so detrimental to the public health, as the B. within churches, was checked in this country until the whole system of intramural interment, as it was called, was attacked, about the year 1844, by Mr. Chadwick and other sanitary reformers. Measures Were afterwards carried for shutting graveyards in crowded cities, and placing interments in open cemeteries under sanitary control. The first great measure was passed in 1850, when the board of health was made a B. board for the metropolis, and power was given to the privy council to close the city graveyards. The act was modified two years afterwards, by transferring the duties of managing cemeteries to local boards appointed by the vestries. It was in London that the danger was most urgent and the remedy immediate. It was extended to the
English provinces in 1853, and to Scotland in 1855.
In England, 13. in some part of the parish churchyard is a common law right, which may be enforced by mandamus—that is, every person may he buried in the parish where he dies. But the body of a parishioner cannot be interred in an iron coffin or vault, or even in any particular part of a churchyard, as, for instance, the vault, without an additional fee.
The fact that the only religious service which can at present be conducted at the grave is that of the church of England, has led of late years to the repeated proposal in parliament of measures to permit dissenters to have their own services performed in the churchyard—as yet without results.
By the canons of the church of England, clergymen cannot refuse or delay to bury any corpse that is brought to the church or churchyard; on the other hand, a conspiracy to prevent a B. is an indictable offense, and so is the willfully obstructing a clergyman in reading the B. service in a parish church. It is a popular error, that a creditor can arrest or detain the body of a deceased debtor; and the doing such an act is indictable as a misdemeanor. It is also an error. that permitting a funeral procession to pass over private grounds creates a public right of way. By the 3 Geo. IV. c. 126, s. 32, the inhabitants of any parish, township, or place,when going to or returning from attending funerals of persons in England who have died and are to be buried there, are exempted from any toll within these limits. And by the 4 Geo. IV. c. 49, s. 36, the same regulation is extended to Scotland; the only difference being, that in the latter case the limitation of the district is described by the word parish alone. The 6 and 7 Will. IV. c. 86 regulates. the registry of deaths. The 4 Geo. IV. c. 52 abolished the barbarous mode of burying persons found felo de se, and directs that their B. shall take place, without any marks. of ignoininy, privately in the parish churchyard, between the hours of nine and twelve at night, under the direction of the coroner. The B. of dead bodies cast on shore is, enforced by 48 Geo. III. c. 75. See Wharton's Law Lexicon.
In Scotland, the right of B. in a churchyard is an incident of property in the parish; but it is a mere right of B., and there is not necessarily any corresponding ownership in the solum or ground of the churchyard. Iu Edinburgh, however, the right to special B. places in churchyards is recognized.—For B. in cemeteries in England and Scotland, see CEMETERY.