Page:Tale of Paraguay - Southey.djvu/182

176 It is not surprising that such practises arise from superstition; but it is strange, indeed, that they should afford any gratification to pride. That excellent man, Fletcher of Madeley, has a striking remark upon this subject. "The murderer," says he, "is dissected in the surgeon's hall, gratis; and the rich sinner is embowelled in his own apartment at great expence. The robber, exposed to open air, wastes away in hoops of iron; and the gentleman, confined to a damp vault, moulders away in sheets of lead; and while the fowls of the air greedily prey upon the one, the vermin of the earth eagerly devour the other."

How different is the feeling of the Hindoos upon this subject from that of the Egyptians! "A mansion with bones for its rafters and beams; with nerves and tendons for cords; with muscles and blood for mortar; with skin for its outward covering; filled with no sweet perfume, but loaded with feces and urine; a mansion infested by age and by sorrow, the seat of malady, harassed with pains, haunted with the quality of darkness, and incapable of standing long.—Such a mansion of the vital soul lets its occupier always cheerfully quit."—Inst, of Menu.