[Illustration: THE GREAT POND, FRENSHAM.]
As an original supporter of an enterprise that never sought to make money, I need not shrink from giving it bold advertisement. The one valid objection to cremation, that death by poisoning might be undetected, is obviated by the precautions all along insisted upon by the Cremation Society, which, along with its own aims, has advocated such more stringent examination into the cause of death as itself requires in every case. The proceedings are facilitated when, in lifetime, one has expressed a disposition for this kind of funeral. The cost of cremation has now been reduced to a few pounds, becoming lowered as the apparatus was more often used. The Golder's Green Crematorium has almost extinguished the Society's, which stands below the Knap Hill Barracks, and above the canal bank, a mile or two out of Woking, just beyond the church of St. John's Hill. The building includes a chapel, where any religious service desired may be held, this and the final disposal of the remains being left to the friends of the deceased. The body, shrivelled up by a blast of hot air, is turned into a small handful of ashes, which can be preserved in an urn or buried in the ground, when its life is scattered through this world in the undying good or evil a man has helped to do. The Crematorium enclosure has a close-packed show of tiny tombstones and dwarf crosses, that give a strange effect, as of a dolls' cemetery, so inveterate is the desire for some visible memorial of our loved ones. For my part, I should wish what is not my real self to be thrown out on any of the breezy commons about Woking--
That from his ashes may be made The _heather_ of his native land.
All this fair country has been used for sepulchres since, above the heaths trodden by funeral processions and cheerful warriors of our day, were heaped tumuli where long-forgotten chiefs "quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests." The neighbourhood has some notable recent graves, besides those in the great gathering. Over the common to the west of Brookwood Cemetery is reached Pirbright, where, near the east end of the churchyard, Henry Stanley lies at rest beneath a huge block of rough stone, an appropriate monument for him whom the natives styled "stone-breaker," in admiration of his masterful dealing with difficulties. At Frimley, on the Surrey border, is buried Bret Harte. A little to the south of this, beside Farnborough station, on a wooded hill rises a far-seen dome, miniature of that which covers the great Napoleon at Paris, this one crowning a Benedictine Abbey built to enshrine the tombs of Louis Napoleon and his ill-fated son. On the other side of the line is the home of the Empress who, one might think, had little reason to love sights that should sorrowfully remind her how many a French mother's son may have been spared through her untimely loss. Yet here this bereaved exile was neighbour to our chief national manufactory of martial death.