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SIR - Business connexions necessitating my being in the neighbourhood of Stone Buildings, I witnessed at the Cathedral Church of St. David's, two funeral processions, at about 3 o'clock p.m. of this day, both being those of infants. In the first of these, in which the little ones remains were conveyed in a cab, the vehicle drew up at the cathedral door, but with its melancholy burthern departed quickly, no reception of the body and no service being performed at the Cathedral. In the other case a few minutes subsequently there was no cab, but a funeral procession, and as in the case of the former, consisting of those little ones, possibly relatives probably not, but whose affections toward the deceased were the incentives for their attendance. In the first case the body of the child was not admitted, and the cab drove away, and that body was deposited in the grave yard of St. David's, awaiting no doubt the arrival of the second child's remains and the clergyman's services. In neither of these matters was the bell of St. Davids's tolled. I do not attach any importance to the latter observance, nor do insist that the admission a deceased childs remains in the Church or Cathedral be very material to the heavenly welfare of the immortal part of the deceased, yet I insist that the decent ordinances of the Church appear to require the tolling of the bell, the admission of the body into the Church previously to interment, the procession headed by the Clergyman officiating and so on. I trust I may be allowed as a Member of the Church of England for 27 years past, to ask if these (apparently) indecent exceptions are allowed by the Church authorities, and why the tolling of the bell on these occasions did not take place. I can only say that more than two or three parties belonging to the Church expressed a willingness to subscribe a few shillings on any future occassion to pay the Church officer, or other official to observe the decencies relating to the last offices for the dead, and particularly in the Metropolitan capital and Cathedral of the well subsidised Church of England. Yours, &c. "LEX SCRIPTA MANET." June 24rd, 1862. [We give insertion to the above letter because the circumstances it relates were the matter of common talk in town yesterday afternoon, a feeling of indignation being freely expressed at what was regarded as an outrage on all Christian propriety. - We were eye-witnesses of the facts mentioned by our correspondent, but we trust for the honor of christianity and of the Church of England that they are susceptible of some other explanation. For this we shall wait. - ED. M.] |