Immediately after passing the gateway you at once ascend a steep acclivity, (and, indeed, the cemetery is altogether on the summit and side of the hill,) which leads to the catacombs. This ascent has been found most inconvenient in practice; as I have been informed that, in unfavourable weather, the mourners have been obliged to leave their coaches and walk to the place where the body was to be deposited.

The company to whom this cemetery belongs is established by an Act of Parliament, passed in the sixth and seventh year of the reign of King William IV.

This Act was, it must be confessed, a very sorry piece of legislation. The effect of it might have been to create a monopoly of cemetery interment in favour of one joint-stock company; a course altogether so inexpedient and improper, that it could have been tolerated only as a less evil than the horrible practices relating to burials in London, which had become so nauseating to the public taste and feeling.

The Act is entituled, " An Act for establishing Cemeteries for the Interment of the Dead, Northward, Southward, and Eastward, of the Metropolis, by a Company, to be called the London Cemetery Company."

This Act, although extensive in its range, and very improperly so, was, however, encumbered with some restrictions to which the cemetery at Kensal Green has not been subjected. The second section of the Act empowers the company to make three cemeteries,

not exceeding in the whole 150 statute acres, in certain parishes in the counties of Surrey, Kent, and Middlesex; viz. one in the parish of Camberwell, or the parish or parishes adjoining thereto; a second in the parish of St. Pancras,* in the county of Middlesex, and the parish or parishes adjoining thereto; and the third in the parishes of St. Matthew, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney, Bow, Mile End, Stratford, and Hackney respectively, or in some or one of those parishes.

The capital of this company is limited to £100,000, divisible into 5000 shares of £20 each a large proportion of this capital has been expended on the Highgate Cemetery

alone.

This cemetery was consecrated in 1839, and many interments have taken place; and no palpable line of separation distinguishes the consecrated from the unconsecrated portion. With reference to the registers of burials, which the Acts of Parliament render it incumbent upon these companies to keep, and which registers are established as legal evidence of the fact of burial, there is a wide difference between the provisions of the act relating to the Kensal Green Cemetery, and that which relates to the one we are describing. The former compels the company to keep a register of all burials,

* By some singular inconsistency, the third section of the General Cemetery Act, (passed four years previously,) specifically prohibits that company from buying land in St. Pancras parish for the purpose of a cemetery.

whether occuring in the consecrated or unconsecrated ground. A duplicate of the register is from time to time forwarded to the bishop of the diocese, to be kept with the other register books of the parishes within his diocese; the original books, or copies, or extracts therefrom, are receivable in all courts of law or equity, as evidence of the fact of burial. This provision, so far as it goes, is fair; because it is obvious that, in all secular advantages connected with the cemetery, all interred therein have a right to an equal share or proportion.

The charge for consecration, and the inoney paid to the Lord Bishop for his services on that occasion, are all part of the general expenditure incurred by the projectors or shareholders, for the benefit or otherwise, as the case may be, of those who are, or who have friends, interred there; and more than this, the very fees of which we have before spoken, as being payable to the incumbents of parishes, in respect of corpses interred in the consecrated portion of the cemetery, are also charges paid by the Dissenter, or foreigner, who does not use the consecrated earth, as well as by him who does : for it is to be observed, that all the cemetery companies, chargeable with this outgoing, advertise that no fees are payable by the parties to parishes from or through which bodies are brought for interment. Nor are these fees so payable; but they are defrayed by the company as one of its necessary current expenses; and the proprietors of the cemetery, having made their calculations of outgoings, so charge

all parties, whether citizen, denizen, or alien, -episcopalian or dissenter-that this expense, together with all others, to which they are liable on the "loss" side of the account, shall be reimbursed them by the contra profits.

This plain statement of the true position of the matter, will at once prove the unfairness of the provisions of the Act of Parliament constituting the Highgate Cemetery. The benefits of the register are confined solely to the burials which occur in the consecrated ground. Dissenters, though contributing to pay for the ground in the first instance-subscribing to pay the Bishop for consecrating it (to their prejudice)-subscribing to pay the fees to the clergy, who have done nothing to earn them-nay, subscribing also to defray the expenses of keeping the very register itself, are cut off from its benefits, and the ominous "dele" written against their names! Is this as it should be? or as, in common practice, betwixt man and man, it ought to be?

This cemetery is, of course, liable to pay fees to the clergy of parishes from which bodies are brought for interment; and the Bishop of London succeeded in obtaining better terms for his clergy, in this instance, than the last.

The

Kensal Green Cemetery was liable to the payment of fees only to the incumbents of parishes situated both within the bills of mortality, and the diocese of London; the Highgate Cemetery Company is liable to incumbents of parishes situate within five miles of the cemetery; and the same distance applies to any other ceme

tery which the company may establish, under their wide-stretching Act of Parliament. The amount of these fees is the same as at Kensal Green.

I believe this company has obtained a site for their southern cemetery at Nunhead Hill, near Peckham, and that the ground is inclosed, and will shortly be consecrated.

The success of this portion of their project must be very problematical, as the Nunhead station is within two miles of the South Metropolitan Cemetery at Norwood, before described, and which it will be impossible for the former to excel, and hardly to compete with, in beauty of prospect, style of architecture, or the convenience of the practical details and general arrangements.

The following criticisms on this cemetery, appeared at the same time with those which have been inserted in the description of the Norwood Cemetery. The author disclaims entire concurrence with them.

From the "Companion to the Almanac,” of 1839: "Occupying one of the loveliest and most pleasant sites in the vicinity of the metropolis, and decorated by a profusion of flowers, and by showy bits of architecture, whatever may be its charms, this place, has certainly nothing of that solemnity which its purpose seems to call for. To the gaiety arising from the natural beauties of scenery and prospect it might seem like churlish hypercriticism to make any objection; but instead of any attempt to subdue it, we perceive that pains have been studiously taken to render it prominent. The southern entrance, in Swain's Lane,