A letter to the Times of Wednesday reminds us that
the age of Xenophon anticipated, in some degree, Mr. Seymour Haden's recommendation to bury without coffins. In the " Cyropxdia," book viii., a. 7, Xenophon makes Cyrus the Elder, when dying, say to his sons, "With regard to my body after I am dead, I have a request to make of you, my sons, and that is, that you will not place it in any vessel of gold, or silver, or any other substance, but that you will, as speedily as possible, give it back to the earth ; for what can be more desirable than to be mingled with the earth, which produces and fosters all that is beautiful and all that is good ? I have, I trust, always been a philanthro- pist, and methinks it will give me pleasure now to be identified with that which is the great benefit of mankind." That is more, perhaps, of a pantheistic than of a chemical or [sanitary view of the coffin question. Cyrus looked apparently at the earth as the Alma Mater of the earth-born, and wished to be blended as quickly as possible with its energies, much as the Comtista hope to live in the life of posterity. But still the practical object was the same, and the perception that there is no individuality in a corpse of which to be jealously conservative, was the same, though the philanthropy of Mr. Seymour Haden consists chiefly in the wish to save men against a powerful poison, while the philanthropy of Cyrus the Elder consisted chiefly in the wish to give back to the source of human well-being for the future all that he had received from it in the past.
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