dead of that particular pestilence; and the excuse for it, if excuse it be, is the desire to remove from the living all possibility of contagion from the bodies of the dead, dispensing with experiments with a view to reducing risk; and making sure, so to speak, of the corpse without giving it the benefit of a doubt.
The fact is, that the modern inhabitants of Italy—i. e., modern Italian legislators—are extremely intolerant of what may be called the romance of the death-chamber. Reverence for the deceased, a craving for the companionship of the unburied corpse, is not encouraged in Italy. As soon as life is extinct, or is believed to be extinct, the human being ceases to be sacred. It is earth or clay and nothing more, and the glamour of a beloved face which no longer smiles does not, to an Italian mind, speak of a soul hovering near the body, a soul asleep, not dead, which haunts the chamber of woe, and makes itself felt, as it were instinctively, in the presence of the mourners. Theology teaches Italians that the soul of the deceased is in purgatory, and that the altar and not the death-bed is the place to kneel at; so that, by kneeling and praying and doing penance (by fees and masses), mourners may be able to comfort the souls of the departed in the limbo they inhabit. Corpses belong in the first instance to the priests (who, after the unction by sacred oil, light tapers by the bedside); and in the second instance to the legal or sanitary authorities who employ the grave-diggers. The death-chamber is abandoned by the mourners, who flock to the church; and the room, and sometimes the whole house, is furbished up, and even whitewashed, as if the death of a near and dear relative had brought contamination upon it.
Now, it would be interesting to discover at what period of history the Italians began to be so severe in their treatment of the dead. The ancient inhabitants of Italy were by no means so rigorous. They were tender in the death-chamber, and careful at the funeral-pyre; though pagans, they were merciful in matters of life and death. Their burial laws were to a great extent similar to those of England—similar as regards the interval between death and funeral, and only different as regards the funeral itself.
The Romans had indeed many experiences of official and medical blundering, and that is perhaps the reason why they were, at certain periods, so careful in their funeral rites. Pliny tells the story of the Consul Acilius, who, being reputed dead, was placed on the pyre, and started up to shriek for assistance while the flames were gathering round him; but too late to be saved. Lucius was burned alive; and Tuberus, waking from the trance of death while preparations were being made to burn him, was removed by his friends and others from the stake. The interval between death and funeral was fixed at eight days. It was seldom less, and it was sometimes more; for Licurgus, in his anxiety to prevent accidents—i. e., medical and judicial murders—fixed the interval at eleven days. Why do the modern Romans,
