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purchase from the creditors the body of his father, the celebrated Miltiades ;-but that we, a Christian and enlightened people, should adopt this barbarism, and refuse so natural a right as that of sepulture for an offence so venial and conventional as that of debt, is indeed a somewhat startling inconsistency. It is currently believed that a Spanish ambassador of former days still lies in his coffin upon the marble floor of Westminster Hall, towards whom the common duties of religion and humanity have been unfulfilled, because he was found wanting towards society in the more important considerations of certain pounds, shillings, and pence!

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In one respect, at all events, we have higher religious notions and a more exalted philosophy than our ancestors-we seek the preservation of the soul, not that of the body, Reason herself assuring us that it is a fond and foolish yearning to take heed for the worthless tegument, when the immortal spirit it enshrined has fled. Reason is a stout theorist, but very often a sorry practitioner: so we talk, but so we do We cannot so easily forget this companion of our earthly pilgrimage-this sharer of our joys and sorrows-this body corporate, which constitutes our sole notion of identity and self. Few of us make a will without directing the place and manner of our interment: we conceive that we are gratifying those who have died before us by lavishing funeral honours upon their remains; we talk of the consolation of being laid with them in the tomb, of being gathered to our fathers, and of being rejoined by the children who

are to follow us. All this appears ridiculous when applied to inanimate matter; but we talk of death with the feelings of life, of another world with the inalienable affections of this. Montaigne says that the mind must be screwed to a high pitch to make it sensible of its own decay; how must it then be wound up to make it comprehend its own dissolution! Sense cannot understand its own insensibility, nor can consciousness conceive of its own unconsciousness; for we can no more project our understandings forward into our posthumous state, than we can cast them backwards into that which was ante-natal. Before the vital spark is extinct we throw its light into the grave; the only way in which it may consistently be said that even in our ashes live their wonted fires."

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How can we conceive of ourselves as inanimate, when it is much more difficult than is generally imagined to believe in the insensibility of external matter, to which we are perpetually attempting to impart our own sensitiveness. The child scolds, caresses, and reasons with its doll as if it were a rational being, occasionally beating the stool over which it has stumbled, and the floor upon which it has fallen, as if they were endued with feeling. "Men are but children of a larger growth:" Xerxes flogged and threw chains upon the sea, for wrecking his vessels; the poor Indian, whose untutored mind "sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind," considers the elements as the living ministers of his will; the Pagans in their beautiful mythology animated universal nature, vivifying the valleys, mountains, seas, rivers and trees, and bestowing

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upon every spot, not otherwise appropriated, its local genius; Roman Catholics address their vows to statues, pictures, and relics, as the sensible, representatives of an invisible prototype; poets of all countries and persuasions personify and apostrophise the external features of nature; and there is hardly a man in existence who has not vented his spleen upon some portion of offending matter as if it were sensible to his resentment, or soliloquised it in his happier moods as if it could sympathise with his complacency.

As many countries do not afford wood enough for their combustion, it is to be presumed that nature meant our bodies for interment ; and yet that method of mouldering back into our constituent elements is loathsome and revolting to every sense of man. The ancient practice of cremation was more delicate, and fraught with more grateful associations: that portion of us which fire could consume ascended in the form of smoke to heaven; our less perishable remains, gathered from the funeral pyre, or preserved by the incombustible asbestos, were deposited in elegant vases and urns, to be consigned to the tomb, or sometimes enshrined among the domestic deities of the paternal dwelling. Cyrus, however, forbade this disposal of his body, or any other monument to be erected to his memory, thinking that this beautiful earth, with its majestic trees, delicious fruits, nodding flowers, and glorious overhanging firmament, formed a more magnificent tomb than any that the power of man could devise or execute. Cæsar and Alexander seem to have had no monuments; the sarcophagus

wherein the latter was supposed to have been inhumed cannot adduce any historical evidence in support of its pretensions. Pompey and Cato were in a similar predicament, while the barber of Augustus and the freedman of Claudius reposed beneath magnificent tombs.

Marmoreo Licinus tumulo jacet, at Cato parvo ;
Pompeius nullo. Credimus esse Deos?—

MART.

The monuments of the ancients were mostly constructed by the sides of the high roads, but this varied according to the taste of the individual. Propertius gave the preference to a retired spot.

Dii faciant, mea ne terra locet ossa frequenti,
Qua facit assiduo tramite vulgus iter.

While Lollius inscribes upon his tomb,

Hic propter viam positus,

Ut dicant prætereuntes,

Lolli-vale!—

Save me! save me, ye guardian spirits of the dead! from being interred in any of those civic cemeteries, cabined in with high windowless walls, where the earth, ever unvisited by the sun, is black and unctuous with the fermentation of accumulated remains; where the smoky tombstones are dank, desolate, and unperused, and human bones are left scattered upon the surface, as if in an unhallowed desert, while the desecrated enclosure perpetually rings with the yell of carmen, the rattling of wheels, the cries of hucksters, and all the profane hubbub of commercial life. We conceive not of the peace or the sleep of

death, amid this hurley-burley of the mart. Not that I have quite so lively a sense of death as the Parisian, who, standing upon the height of Père La Chaise, exclaimed, "What a pleasure to be buried in a spot which commands so fine a view of Paris!"-but that there seems something soothing and congenial in the thought of our last resting-place being sanctified by the holy, calm, and benign influences of rural nature.

In the middle ages, according to the eloquent authoress of Valperga, the family of the Soldanieri at Florence had a vast subterranean cemetery, admitting a dim light by a grating that communicated with the cloisters of the great church. It was their custom to coffin their dead warriors in brazen statues, made to imitate the living form and mien of the corpse within, armed cap-à-pié, and mounted astride brazen figures of horses, so that the population of this extensive receptacle resembled a party of armed knights ready for action. Viewed by torch-light, this assemblage must have formed a sight awfully solemn, and well according with the martial ferocity of an age, which would recall the fury and the passions of life even amid the peaceful silence of the tomb; but the philosopher would advert to the preposterous and presumptuous folly of these bloodless champions of the dust-these heroes of impotence, apparently spurring their brazen chargers into the other world, who, in spite of the tilted lance or brandished sword, were shrivelling up into skeletons, totally unable to defend themselves against the attacks of the worm that crawled within their helmets.

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