We regret to say that the total sum raised in England, including the £300 given by the two ladies, is only £752. This is an object highly deserving of encouragement from ourwealthier readers.

This notice must not be concluded without an expression of our regret that the decease, on his homeward passage, of the Rev. T. B. Naylor, the excellent incumbent of the parish of S. Andrew, Sydney, in which the cathedral is building, has prevented our learning many particulars (as we had hoped to do) from his lips, as to the progress

P.M. Se

of church building and architecture in Australia. His loss will be severely felt in the Colony.

We subjoin notices of a few other Australian churches.

We are sorry to learn that S. Paul, Chippendale, of which we have formerly given an account, is now at a stand-still, (we trust only a temporary one) for want of funds.

S. Thomas, Enfield, was in August last (1849) nearly ready for

consecration.

S. John Evangelist, Camden, consists of chancel, nave, and western tower and spire, all built of brick. The windows, which are of Middle-Pointed design, are of the local stone, more grey, and more close, though softer, than the Sydney sandstone. The roof is open

and has tie-beams. The Sydney Guardian (we are glad to see) complains of the shortness of the chancel, and of the absence of sacristy and porch.

S., Berrima was consecrated by the Lord Bishop of Sydney on the 9th June last. The church consists of a nave, 50 feet by 25, a chancel, 18 feet by 16, a north porch, and a vestry, attached to the chancel. It has a stone bell-cot and spire, with two bells, and is as yet the only one in the Diocese. The west end of the nave, as also the east of the chancel, have painted windows, of three lights. The side windows have square heads, and tracery. All the windows are of white sandstone, and are filled with diamond-shaped glazing. The roof is open, and spanned with hammer-beam trusses and curved brackets; the shingles are laid on close boarding. The seats are all open and moveable; the pulpit stands at the angle of the chancel arch, and the reader's seat forms the north stall in the chancel. The altar rails are carved with trefoiled panels of open work.

ON FUNERALS AND CEMETERIES.

a

It is with no small pleasure that we are enabled to commence second series of our Instrumenta Ecclesiastica. The testimonies we have received from all quarters to the usefulness of the first volume, and at the same time the numerous applications that have been made to us for details or fittings not contained in it, give us on the one hand, a sufficient reason for commencing a second, and on the other, a confidence that the labour we shall bestow on it will not be thrown away.

We could not hesitate for a moment in selecting a subject for our first number. At a time when a great national movement for the more fitting interment of departed Christians is everywhere perceptible; when this movement, though with some exaggerations, and some distortions of feeling, tends steadily in the right direction; when the present government has always displayed a willingness to further the good work, and (if report may be believed) intends to bring forward a comprehen

sive measure in the approaching session on the subject;—we could not but feel that designs for a cemetery chapel with the necessary buildings attached to it, and appropriate fittings to all, would be the most important subject to which we could bend our attention.

And this therefore we put forth in the first number of our second series. The same reason induces us so soon to recur to a topic that we partly discussed in the last Ecclesiologist but one.

We have said that, in our opinion, public feeling is moving with a right direction in the cry against the present system of funerals, and burying places. Two dangers, however, seem worthy our attention; and we will speak briefly of each.

The first is, lest the one thing, to the exclusion of all others, should be held to be the protection of the public health. Nothing, we allow, can be more important; nothing more worthy of every possible effort; nothing more wonderful than that God should put it into the power of rulers to lengthen the average of human life, and diminish the duration and alleviate the intensity of human suffering. And the privilege involves a duty of corresponding magnitude. Sanatory considerations then are the first and the greatest: let this be allowed by all means; let newspapers of all sentiments unite in setting them forth and enforcing them; we only wish to have it remembered that they are not all. The cura pro vivis habenda is not to exclude the curu pro mortuis gerenda. The question is not simply a philosophical and material one; how "an impossible chemical compound "such as the human body becomes when life is gone,-can most easily, most inoffensively, be resolved into its component elements; how noxious gases may be prevented from disseminating their poison; how the air we breathe, and the water we drink, may be guarded from impregnation with the subtlest venom; how the Houses of GOD may be hindered from becoming nests of fever, and churchyards from degenerating into "consecrated cesspools ;"there are other considerations also which, to them that believe in the Resurrection of the Dead, and the Life of the World to come, are of no small interest and moment. The dust must return to the earth as it was; and those brief words, if rightly understood, bind us to all the duties that sanatory considerations suggest; but, also, the spirit shall return to God Who gave it; and that involves another series of feelings and duties.

They, for the Christian burial of whose remains we are providing, were our brethren in CHRIST while they lived; and now that they have entered on another and higher life, they are our brethren in CHRIST still. We are bound to provide that their remains, so far as in us lies, shall rest undisturbed and inviolate till the great Doom; that in the same place where they lie down to rest, in the same they shall arise to their sentence. Their bodies, which were temples of the HOLY GHOST, must be treated as His temples still; and since it is by the grave and gate of death that they must pass to their resurrection, it is ours to make the grave honourable, and the gate of death as reverend a thing as they should do who believe it to be the porch of Life. Therefore while, on the one hand, we prevent for the future the abominations of which we have read, and, alas, still read, with horror; the yet distinguishable fea

tures of corrupted humanity left to reek under an August sun, or defaced with the grave-digger's mattock ;-churchyard earth carted on to the churchwarden's fields: skulls set up for a mark at which boys may throw stones; things which the worst and darkest Paganism would have abhorred and revolted from; so on the other, the funeral itself is not to be hastened over as a mere burying our dead out of our sight; a mere hurrying a nuisance out of the way; but is to be treated as the performance of an act of faith,-that we believe in the Resurrection; as an act of hope,-that we trust again to see the form which the coffin now conceals from us; and as an act of charity,—that our brother's dishonour, as only temporary, may be concealed, and that those who shall pass the place where he lies, may be defended from all danger or inconvenience.

And this brings us to a second point of the popular movement, the cry for cheap funerals. With this, in great part, we fully and deeply sympathize. The race of undertakers must either be most utterly and radically reformed: or if this should be found impossible, abolished. Some few exceptions there are, but, as a body, their extortions, their heardheartedness, their injustice, the indecency of their behaviour, their abominable arrangements, do indeed bring us back to the old heathen's saying, and make a modern funeral of "all horrible things the most horrible." Their present trade is driven by taking advantage of mental agony to extort exorbitant prices. How is the widow in the first burst of her grief to haggle about hatbands and scarves, and mourning cloaks, and black kid gloves, with men whose hearts are as hard as the nether millstone? How is the parent from whom a darling child has just been torn, to regulate prices, point out overcharges, beat down extortions, and only have for answer— "O, Sir, if you don't wish to do the thing genteel- ·?" And therefore, rather than fail in any outward mark of respect to the dead, the widow will draw deeper on her miserable pittance, will wrong the living rather than the departed; and the ill-gotten money, while it only procures some wretched pseudo-decorations, is but as a drop in the ocean to the undertaker's other extortions.--With the poorest class, those to whom a penny is an object, it is painful to see the struggle between prudence and love;-they will stretch a point to have a more expensive shroud, to have six coffin handles, to have frilling; as, in a higher station, to have the coffin lined, or a brass plate.

The Times lately exposed the exorbitant gains of London undertakers; and to the bills there given we refer our readers. We thought to have done as much for their country brethren; but the scale of charges varies so much that, by printing any one bill, we might possibly only be teaching in other places a higher rate of extortion. There is but one way of meeting the evil; and that is, the establishment of a company, or still better, a religious society, in London, for the provision of really Christian funerals at proper graduated and fixed charges: this would be the death blow of the present wicked system; and we may return, at another time, to the subject.

But, while we sympathise in thefeeling of indignation so generally expressed against undertakers, we are utterly opposed to the idea that

A solemn religious

funerals should be as plain and unritual as may be. service is not so to be performed. Even natural religion revolts against it. Let us get rid of the expensive trash of a modern funeral, of undertakerism in its idea and details, of plumes, and trapped horses, and mutes, and such like paraphernalia; but do not let us fall into meanness in the service of GoD. A Christian funeral will be much cheaper than the present heathen obsequies; but never let us wish it so cheap, that a man should be buried like a dog.

Let us now go into some of the items of a funeral, and at the end we will return to the Cemetery question with which we began.

in one.

1. To begin with the COFFIN. In most parts of England the shape of this is absolutely wrong, in two essential particulars ;-everywhere, The rounding off at the shoulders gives a hideousness of appearance it is an outline, and yet not an outline, of the human form; a kind of caricature of humanity;-and it is the cause of needless expense. The true form, a mere slope from the head to the feet, the exterior shape of all old coffins, is both more in accordance with good feeling and correct taste, and also cheaper. It is still kept up in some parts of England: e.g. in many villages of Norfolk and Suffolk. The other fault is, the flat top. It ought to be gabled; and where money is not an object, double-gabled. But the poor man, we will assume, must be contented with a plain gable; the joining concealed by the upright of the cross that will run from the head to the foot of the coffin: while the arms will branch off over the breast. This cross must be worked with square edges; and may be continued plain to the ends, or may expand after the fashion of a Cross Formye. When it is double gabled, a roll moulding may be added at the pitch of each gable, good and bold, and continued plain to the end.

In

A single gabled coffin will, it may be said, be naturally more expensive than those of the flat-topped fashion. It will so. It will cost about four shillings more; perhaps not so much more when the carpenter becomes used to his work; but we shall save that presently. the funeral of a pauper, the Union will sometimes expend the eighteen shillings which the coffin costs, and allow the relations to add, if they think fit, some little decoration. Here the gabled top may be well recommended. If not, objection will rarely be made to having a cross marked in white paint on the flat top from head to foot;-and thus a symbol of Christianity is introduced.

*

Nothing can be more vile than the usual decoration of coffins ;their stamps, and handles and plates. For the stamps, we may dispense with them altogether, as being utterly useless: but the handles we must have, and the plates are quite permissible. But the design of the handles, as at present made, is execrable; stamped tin plates, of the most wretched arabesque work, and in the poorest cases japanned and and shining. They should be an iron ring, fastened into an iron plate,

* Curiously enough, while writing this paragraph, we were called off to give directions for the making of a coffin. Among other stamps which the undertaker wished to recommend was one of S. Mary with the Divine Infant in her arms, attended by kneeling angels. If this had been advised in the Ecclesiologist, what should we

have been called?