an be devised.

The inquiry, then, has reached its limit; for, apart from the modes that
have just been named, there are no others but earth-burial and
entombment, and earth-burial, as we have seen, cannot be made sanitary
under common conditions. Therefore, if the demands of affection and
sanitation are both to be met, entombment is to do it, or it cannot be
done.

Happily, better than any other method of disposing of the dead that has
ever been devised, entombment has met the demand of affection. Never has
any other mode so commended itself to men as this. There may have been
at times a general adoption of cremation, and there may have been a
general prevalence of earth-burial, but the one has not long satisfied
the sorrowing survivors, and the other has owed its beginning and
continuance to the apparent absence of alternative. Wherever the living
have been able, and the dead have been dearly loved or highly esteemed,
the tendency to entomb and not to bury has been constantly manifested.

To call attention to this tendency is enough to prove it, so easily
accessible is the evidence and so familiar is its operation in the human
heart. The most natural reference will be, first, to the mausoleum, the
tomb of Mausolus, that was erected by his sorrowing Queen, Artemisia, at
Halicarnassus, upon the AEgean's eastern shore, and that became at once
one of the few great wonders of the ancient world. This was intended to
do honor to the loved and illustrious dead, and this it did as no grave
or pyre could do. This was also intended to protect the lifeless form
from ruthless robbery and reckless profanation, and it performed this
task so well that for near two thousand years no human eye beheld the
mortal part of Mausolus, and no human hand disturbed its rest. At a far
earlier time, Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, while he illustrated
this tendency to entomb the dead, also offered an influential example to
all who would do him reverence, as, in the hour of his great sorrow, he
sought the seclusion and the security of Machpelah's cave for the last
earthly resting-place of his beloved wife. There he buried Sarah; there
he and his son and his son's son and their wives were all laid to rest,
and the place of their repose hath not been violated even at this
distant day. To this constant tendency constant testimony is borne by
the massive and magnificent tombs in which India abounds, the tombs and
pyramids that make marvellous t