There are several burial pits in _Paris_, of a
prodigious size and depth, in which the dead bodies are laid, side by
side, without any earth being put over them till the ground tier is
full; then, and not till then, a small layer of earth covers them, and
another layer of dead comes on, till by layer upon layer, and dead upon
dead, the hole is filled with a mass of human corruption, enough to
breed a plague; these places are enclosed, it is true, within high
walls; but nevertheless, the air cannot be _improved_ by it; and the
idea of such an assemblage of putrifying bodies, in one grave, so thinly
covered, is very disagreeable. The burials in churches too, often prove
fatal to the priests and people who attend; but every body, and every
thing in _Paris_, is so much alive, that not a soul thinks about the
dead.
I wish I had been born a Frenchman.--Frenchmen live as if they were
never to die. Englishmen die all _their lives_; and yet as _Lewis_ the
XIVth said, "I don't think it is so difficult a matter to die, as men
generally imagine, when they try in earnest.
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