injury or risk to any one.  So convinced has the French Government become of the evils of burial that it has patronized and encouraged one M. Bonneau, who proposes that instead of a great city having its neighbouring cemeteries, it should be provided with a building called The Sarcophagus, occupying an elevated situation, to which the bodies of rich and poor should be conveyed, and there reduced to ashes by a powerful furnace.  And then M. Bonneau, Frenchman all over, suggests that the ashes of our friends might be preserved in a tasteful manner; the funeral urn, containing these ashes, ’replacing on our consoles and mantelpieces the ornaments of bronze clocks and china vases now found there.’  Our author, having shown that burning would save us from the dangers of burying, concludes his treatise by a careful description of the manner in which he would carry out the burning process.  And certainly his plan contains as little to shock one as may be, in carrying out a system necessarily suggestive of violence and cruelty.  There is nothing like the repulsiveness of the Hindoo burning, only half carried out, or even of Mr. Trelawney’s furnace for burning poor Shelley.  I do not remember to have lately read anything more ghastly and revolting than the entire account of Shelley’s cremation.  It says much for Mr. Trelawney’s nerves, that he was able to look on at it; and it was no wonder that it turned Byron sick, and that Mr. Leigh Hunt kept beyond the sight of it.  I intended to have quoted the passage from Mr. Trelawney’s book, but I really cannot venture to do so.  But it is right to say that there were very good reasons for resorting to that melancholy mode of disposing of the poet’s remains, and that Mr. Trelawney did all he could to accomplish the burning with efficiency and decency:  though the whole story makes one feel the great physical difficulties that stand in the way of carrying out cremation successfully.  The advocate of urn-sepulture, however, is quite aware of this, and he proposes to use an apparatus by which they would be entirely overcome.  It is only fair to let him speak for himself; and I think the following passage will be read with interest:—­

On a gentle eminence, surrounded by pleasant grounds, stands a convenient, well-ventilated chapel, with a high spire or steeple.  At the entrance, where some of the mourners might prefer to take leave of the body, are chambers for their accommodation.  Within the edifice are seats for those who follow the remains to the last:  there is also an organ, and a gallery for choristers.  In the centre of the chapel, embellished with appropriate emblems and devices, is erected a shrine of marble, somewhat like those which cover the ashes of the great and mighty in our old cathedrals, the openings being filled with prepared plate glass.  Within this—­a sufficient space intervening—­is an inner shrine covered with bright non-radiating metal, and within this again is a covered sarcophagus of tempered