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Dealings with the Dead, Volume 1 (of 2)

by Lucius M. Sargent · English · Gutenberg #38588 · 827,075 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dealings with the Dead, Volume 1 (of 2)

Author: Lucius M. Sargent


        
Release date: January 16, 2012 [eBook #38588]
                Most recently updated: January 8, 2021

Language: English

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Produced by Delphine Lettau, Meredith Bach and the Online
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Dealings with the Dead.




[Illustration]




[Illustration: DEALINGS with the DEAD, by a SEXTON of the OLD SCHOOL.

DUTTON & WENTWORTH. BOSTON, 1856.]




  DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD.


  BY A SEXTON OF THE OLD SCHOOL.


  VOLUME I.


  BOSTON:
  PUBLISHED BY DUTTON AND WENTWORTH,
  33 AND 35 CONGRESS STREET:
  AND
  TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
  CORNER OF WASHINGTON AND SCHOOL STREETS.
  MDCCCLVI.




"THE BURIAL SERVICE."


This is a very solemn service, when it is properly performed. When I was a
youngster, Grossman was Sexton of Trinity Church, and Parker was Bishop.
Never were two men better calculated to give the true effect to this
service. The Bishop was a very tall, erect person, with a deep, sonorous
voice; and, in the earth-to-earth part, Grossman had no rival. I used to
think, then, it would be the height of my ambition to fill Grossman's
place, if I should live to be a man. When I was eight years old, I
sometimes, though it frightened me half to death, dropped in, as an
amateur, when there was a funeral at Trinity.

I am not, on common occasions, in favor of reviving the old way of
performing a considerable part of the service, under the church, among the
vaults. The women, and feeble, and nervous people will go down, of course;
and getting to be buried becomes contagious. It does them no good, if they
don't catch their deaths. But, as things are now managed, the most solemn
part of the service is made quite ridiculous. In 1796, I was at a funeral,
under Trinity Church. I went below with the mourners. The body was carried
into a dimly-lighted vault. I was so small and short, that I could see
scarcely anything. But the deep, sepulchral voice of Mr. Parker--he was
not Bishop then--filled me with a most delightful horror. I listened and
shivered. At length he uttered the words, "earth to earth," and Grossman,
who did his duty, marvellously well, when he was sober, rattled on the
coffin a whole shovelful of coarse gravel--"ashes to ashes"--another
shovelful of gravel--"dust to dust"--another: it seemed as if shovel and
all were cast upon the coffin lid. I never forgot it. My way home from
school was through Summer Street. Returning often, in short days, after
dusk, I have run, at the top of my speed, till I had gotten as far beyond
Trinity, as Tommy Russell's, opposite what now is Kingston Street.

A great change has taken place, since I became a sexton. I suppose that
part of the service is the most solemn, where the body is committed to the
ground; and it is clearly a pity, that anything should occur, to lessen
the solemnity. As soon as the minister utters the words, "Forasmuch as it
hath pleased Almighty God," &c., the coffin being in the broad aisle, the
sexton, now-a-days, steps up to the right of it, and makes ready by
stooping down, and picking up a little sand, out of a box or saucer--a few
more words, and he takes aim--"earth to earth," and he fires an
insignificant portion of it on to the coffin--"ashes to ashes," and he
fires another volley--"dust to dust," and he throws the balance, commonly
wiping his hand on his sleeve. There is something, insufferably awkward,
in the performance. I heard a young sexton say, last week, he had rather
bury half the congregation, than go through this comic part. There is some
grace, in the action of a farmer, sowing barley; but there is a feeling of
embarrassment, in this miserable illustration of casting in the clods upon
the dead, which characterizes the performance. The sexton commonly tosses
the sand on the coffin, turning his head the other way, and rather
downward, as if he were sensible, that he was performing an awkward
ceremony. For myself, I am about retiring, and it is of little moment to
me. But I hope something better will be thought of. What would poor old
Grossman say!

A SEXTON OF THE OLD SCHOOL.




Dealings with the Dead.

BY A SEXTON OF THE OLD SCHOOL.




No. I.


Throw aside whatever I send you, if you do not like it, as we throw aside
the old bones, when making a new grave; and preserve only what you think
of any value--with a slight difference--you will publish it, and we
shouldn't. I was so fond of using the thing, which I have now in my hand,
when a boy, that my father thought I should never succeed with the mattock
and spade--he often shook his head, and said I should never make a sexton.
He was mistaken. He was a shrewd old man, and I got many a valuable hint
from him. "Abner," said he to me one day, when he saw me bowing, very
obsequiously, to a very old lady, "don't do so, Abner; old folks are never
pleased with such attentions, from people of your profession. They
consider all personal approaches, from one of your fraternity, as wholly
premature. It brings up unpleasant anticipations." Father was right; and,
when I meet a very old, or feeble, or nervous gentleman, or lady, I always
walk fast, and look the other way.

Sextons have greatly improved within the last half century. In old times,
they kept up too close an intimacy with young surgeons; and, to keep up
their spirits, in cold vaults, they formed too close an alliance with
certain evil spirits, such as gin, rum, and brandy. We have greatly
improved, as a class, and are destined, I trust, to still greater
elevation. A few of us are thinking of getting incorporated. I have
read--I read a great deal--I have carried a book, of some sort, in my
pocket for fifty years--no profession loses so much time, in mere waiting,
as ours--I have read, that the barbers and surgeons of London were
incorporated, as one company, in the time of Henry VIII. There is
certainly a much closer relation, between the surgeons and sextons, than
between the barbers and surgeons, since we put the finishing hand to their
work. And as every body is getting incorporated now-a-days, I see no good
reason against our being incorporated, as a society of sextons and
surgeons. And then our toils and vexations would, in some measure, be
solaced, by pleasant meetings and convivial suppers, at which the surgeons
would cut up roast turkeys, and the sextons might bury their sorrows. When
sextons have no particular digging to do, out of doors, it seems well
enough for them to dig in their closets. There is a great amount of
information to be gained from books, particularly adapted to their
profession, some of which is practical, and some of which, though not of
that description, is of a much more profitable character than police
reports of rapes and murders, or the histories of family quarrels, or
interminable rumors of battles and bloodshed. There is a learned
blacksmith; who knows but there may spring up a learned sexton, some of
these days.

The dealings with the dead, since the world began, furnish matter for
curious speculation. What has seemed meet and right, in one age or nation,
has appeared absurd and even monstrous in another. It is also interesting
to contemplate the many strange dispositions, which certain individuals
have directed to be made, in regard to their poor remains. Men, who seem
not to have paid much attention to their souls, have provided, in the most
careful and curious manner, for the preservation of their miserable
carcasses. It may also furnish matter for legitimate inquiry, how far it
may be wise, and prudent, and in good taste, to carry our love of finery
into the place, appropriated for all living. Aristocracy among the dead!
What a thought. Sumptuary considerations are here involved. The rivalry of
the tomb! The pride--not of life--but of death! How frequently have I
seen, especially among the Irish, the practice of a species of pious fraud
upon the baker and the milk man, whose bills were never to be paid, while
all the scrapings of the defunct were bestowed upon the "birril!" The
principle is one and the same, when men, in higher walks, put costly
monuments over the ashes of their dead, and their effects into the hands
of assignees. And then the pageantry and grandiloquence of the epitaph! In
the course of fifty years, what outrageous lies I have seen, done in
marble! Perhaps I may say something of these matters--perhaps not.




No. II.


Closing the eyes of the dead and composing the mouth were deemed of so
much importance, of old, that Agamemnon's ghost made a terrible fuss,
because his wife, Clytemnestra, had neglected these matters, as you will
see, in your Odyssey, L. V. v. 419. It was usual for the last offices to
be performed by the nearest relatives. After washing and anointing the
body, the guests covered it with the _pallium_, or common cloak--the
Romans used the _toga_--the Hebrews wrapped the body in linen. Virgil
tells us, that Misenus was buried, in the clothes he commonly wore.

            Membra toro deffeta reponunt,
  Purpureasque super vestes velamina nota
  Conjiciunt.

This would seem very strange with us; yet it is usual in some other
countries, at this day. I have often seen the dead, thus laid out, in
Santa Cruz--coat, neckcloth, waistcoat, pantaloons, boots, and gloves. I
was never a sexton there, but noted these matters as an amateur. Chaplets
and flowers were cast upon the dead, by the Greeks and Romans. The body
was exhibited, or laid in state, near the entrance of the house, that all
might see there had been no foul play. While thus lying, it was carefully
watched. The body of every man, who died in debt, at Athens, was liable to
be seized by creditors. Miltiades died in jail. His son, Cimon, could not
pay his father's debts; he therefore assumed his debts and fetters, that
his father might have funeral rites. Some time before interment, a piece
of money, an _obolus_, was put in the mouth of the corpse, as Charon's
fee. In the mouth was also placed a cake, made of flour and honey, to
appease Cerberus. Instead of crape upon the knocker, some of the hair of
the deceased was placed upon the door, to indicate a house of mourning. A
vessel of water was placed before the door, until the corpse was removed,
that all who touched the dead might wash therein. This is in accordance
with the Jewish usage. Achilles was burnt on the eighteenth day after his
death. The upper ten thousand were generally burnt on the eighth, and
buried on the ninth. Common folks were dealt with more summarily. When
ready for the pile, the body was borne forth on a bier. The Lacedemonians
bore it on shields. The Athenians celebrated their obsequies before
sunrise. Funerals, in some of our cities, are celebrated in the morning.
The Greeks and Romans were very extravagant, like the Irish. If baked
meats and Chian and Falernian cost less than in more modern times--still
sumptuary laws were found necessary. Pittacus made such, at Mytelene. The
women crowded so abominably, at the funerals in Athens, that Solon
excluded all women, under threescore years, from gadding after such
ceremonies. Robes of mourning were sometimes worn; not always. Thousands
followed the bodies of Timoleon and Aratus, in white garments, bedecked
with garlands, with songs of triumph and dances, rejoicing, that they were
received into Elysium.

After the funeral, they abstained from banquets and entertainments.
Admetus says they avoided whatever bore an air of mirth or pleasure, for
some time. They sequestered themselves from company. It is particularly
stated, by Archbishop Potter, that "_wine was too great a friend of
cheerfulness to gain admission into so melancholy a society_." If Old
Hundred had been known to the Jews, it would, I dare say, have been
considered highly appropriate--but their good taste was such, that I much
doubt, if, in the short space of eight and forty hours, they would have
mingled _sacra profanis_, so very comically, as to bring champagne and Old
Hundred together. The Greek mourners often cut off their hair, and cast it
upon the funeral pile. This custom was also followed by the Romans. They
sometimes threw themselves upon the ground, to express their sorrow. Like
some of the Eastern nations, they put ashes upon their heads. They beat
their breasts, tore their flesh, and scratched their faces, with their
nails. For this, Dionysius says, the women were more remarkable, than the
men.

Burning and embalming, the latter of which was a costly business, were
practised among the Greeks and Romans; the latter much more frequently,
among the Eastern nations. We talk of getting these matters thoroughly
discussed, ere long, before the Sextons' board, to see if it may not be
well, to bring them into use again. I will send you the result.

In regard to the use of wine and other intoxicating drinks, at funerals,
we much more closely resemble the Lacedemonians now, than we did some
thirty years ago. When I was a boy, and was at an academy in the country,
everybody went to everybody's funeral, in the village. The population was
small--funerals rare--the preceptor's absence would have excited remark,
and the boys were dismissed, for the funeral. A table with liquors was
always provided. Every one, as he entered, took off his hat, with his left
hand, smoothed down his hair, with his right, walked up to the coffin,
gazed upon the corpse, made a crooked face, passed on to the table, took a
glass of his favorite liquor, went forth upon the plat, before the house,
and talked politics, or of the new road, or compared crops, or swapped
heifers or horses, until it was time to lift. Twelve years ago, a
clergyman of Newburyport told me, that, when settled in Concord, N. H.,
some years before, he officiated at the funeral of a little boy. The body
was borne, as is quite common, in a chaise, and six little nominal
pall-bearers, the oldest not thirteen, walked by the side of the vehicle.
Before they left the house, a sort of master of ceremonies took them to
the table, and mixed a tumbler of gin, water and sugar, for each.

There is in this city a worthy man--I shall not name him--the doctor's and
the lawyer's callings are not more confidential than ours. He used to
attend every funeral, as an amateur. He took his glass invariably, and
always had some good thing to say of the defunct. "A great loss," he would
say, with a sad shake of his head, as he turned off the heel-tap. I have
not seen him at a funeral, for several years. We met about five months
ago. "Ah, Mr. Abner," said he, "temperance has done for funerals."




No. III.


The board of sextons have met, and we have concluded not to recommend a
revival of the ancient custom of burning the dead. It would be very
troublesome to do it, out of town, and inconvenient in the city. I have
always thought it wrong to bury in the city; and it would be much worse to
burn there. The first law of the tenth table of the Romans is in these
words--"Let no dead body be interred or burnt within the city." Something
may be got to help pay for a church, by selling tombs below. When a church
was built here, some years ago, an eminent physician, one of the
proprietors, was consulted and gave his sanction. Yet more than one of our
board is very sure, that, on a warm, close Sunday, in the spring, he has
snuffed up something that wasn't particularly orthodox, in that church.
The old Romans were very careful of the rights of their fellows, in this
respect: the twelfth law of the tenth table runs thus--"Let no sepulchre
be built, or funeral pile raised within sixty feet of any house, without
the consent of the owner of that house." They certainly conducted matters
with great propriety, avoiding extravagance and intemperance, as appears
by the seventh law of the same table--"Let no slaves be embalmed; let
there be no drinking round a dead body; nor any perfumed liquors be poured
upon it." So also the second law--"Let all costliness and excessive
waitings be banished from funerals." The women were so very troublesome
upon these occasions, that a special law, the fifth, was made for their
government--"Let not the women tear their faces, or disfigure themselves,
or make hideous outcries."

It was not unusual for one person to have several funerals: to prevent
this, however agreeable to the Roman undertakers, the tenth law of the
tenth table was made--"Let no man have more than one funeral, or more than
one bed put under him." There was also a very strange practice during the
first Decemvirate; the friends often abstracted a finger of the deceased,
or some part of the body, and performed fresh obsequies, in some other
place; erecting there a _cenotaph_ or _empty_ sepulchre, in which they
fancied the ghost of the departed took occasional refuge, when wandering
about--in case of a sudden shower, perhaps; or being caught out too near
daylight.

For the correction of this folly, the Decemvirs passed the sixth law of
the tenth table--"Let not any part of a dead body be carried away, in
order to perform other obsequies for the deceased, unless he died in war,
or out of his own country." It was upon such occasions as these, in which
an empty form was observed, and no actual inhumation took place, that the
practice of throwing three handsful of earth originated. This usage was
practised also by the Jews, and has come down to modern times. Baron
Rothschild (Nathan Meyer) who died in Frankfort, July 28, 1836, was buried
in the ground of the Synagogue, in Duke's Place, London. His sons, Lionel,
Anthony, Nathaniel, and Meyer, his brother-in-law, Mr. Montefiore, and his
ancient friend, Mr. Samuels, at the age of ninety-six, commenced the
service of filling up the grave,--by casting in, each one of them, three
handsful of earth. Not satisfied with carrying a bottle of sal volatile to
funerals, the women, and even the men, were in the habit of carrying pots
of essences, which occasioned the enactment of the eighth law--"Let no
crowns, festoons, perfuming pots, or any kind of perfume be carried to
funerals."

Burning or interring was adopted, by the ancients, at the will of the
relatives. This is manifest from the eleventh law, which prohibits the use
of gold in all obsequies, with a single exception--"Let no gold be used in
any obsequies, unless the jaw of the deceased has been tied up with a gold
thread. In that case the corpse may be _interred_ or _burnt_, with the
gold thread." A large quantity of silver is annually buried with the dead.
It finds its way up again, however, in the course of time.

Common as burning was, among the ancients, it was looked upon, by some,
with great abhorrence. The body to be burned was placed upon a pile--if
the body of a person of quality, one or more slaves or captives were
burned with it. When not forbidden, all sorts of precious ointments and
perfumes were poured upon the corpse. The favorite dogs and horses of the
defunct were cast upon the pile. Homer tells us, that four horses, two
dogs, and twelve Trojan captives were burnt upon the pile, with the dead
body of Patroclus. The corpses, that they might consume the sooner, were
covered with the fat of beasts. Some near relative lighted the pile,
uttering prayers to Boreas and Zephyrus to increase the flame. The
relatives stood around, calling on the deceased, and pouring on libations
of wine, with which they finally extinguished the flames, when the pile
was well burnt down. They then collected the bones and ashes. How they
were ever able to discriminate between men, dogs, and horses, it is hard
to say. Probably the whole was sanctified, in their opinion, by
juxtaposition. The bones might be distinguished, but not the dust. Such
bones as could be identified, were washed and anointed _by the nearest
relatives_. What an office! How custom changes the complexion of such
matters! These relics were then placed in urns of wood, stone, earth,
silver, or gold, according to the quality of the parties. Where are these
memorials now! these myriads of urns! They were deposited in tombs--of
which a very perfect account may be found in the description of the street
of tombs, at Pompeii.




No. IV.


The Greeks, when interment was preferred to burning, placed the body in
the coffin, as is done at present, deeming it safer for the defunct to
look upwards. To ridicule this superstition, Diogenes requested, that his
body might be placed face downward, "for the world, erelong," said he,
"will be turned upside down, and then I shall come right." The feet were
placed towards the East. Those, who were closely allied, were buried
together. The epitaph of Agathias, on the twin brothers, is still
preserved--

  "Two brothers lie interred within this urn,
  They died together, as together born."

"They were lovely and pleasant in their lives," said David, of Saul and
Jonathan, "and, in death, they were not divided."

Plato says, that the early Greeks buried their dead, in their own houses.
There was a law in Thebes, that no person should build a house, without
providing a repository for the dead therein. An inconvenient fashion this.
In after-times they buried out of the city, and generally by the way-side.
Hence, doubtless, arose the very common appeal, on their tablets--_Siste
Viator!_ On the road from Cape Ann Harbor to Sandy Bay, now Rockport, are
a solitary grave and a monument--the grave of one, who chanced there to
die. Our graveyards are usually on the roadside. Sometimes a common
_cart-path_ is laid out, through an ancient burying-ground. Such is the
case in Uxbridge, in this Commonwealth. This is Vandalism. Sextons, who
have had long experience, are of opinion, that the rights of the living
and the decencies of life are less apt to be maintained, wherever the
ashes of the dead are treated with disrespect. Burying, by the road-side,
has been said to have been adopted, for the purpose of inspiring
travellers with thoughts of mortality--travellers in railway cars,
perhaps! The first time I visited St. Peter's, in Philadelphia, I was much
impressed with the tablets and their inscriptions, lying level with the
floor of the church, and vertical, I supposed, to the relics below--but I
soon became familiar, and forgetful.

Every family, among the Greeks, who could afford it, had its own proper
burying-ground--as is the case, at the present day, in our own country,
among the planters and others, living far apart from any common point.
This might be well enough, where the feudal system prevailed, and estates,
by the law of descent, continued long in families. If the old usage were
now in vogue, in New York, for instance, what a carting about of family
urns there would be, on May day! Estates will pass from man to man, and
strangers become the custodiers of the dead friends and relatives of the
alienors. It is not unusual to find, on such occasions, a special clause,
in the conveyance, for their protection, and for the perpetual _tabooing_
of the place of sepulture. The first graves of the Greeks were mere
caverns or holes; but, in later times, they were capacious rooms, vaulted
and paved--so large, indeed, that in some instances, the mourners
assembled and remained in them, for days and nights together. Monuments of
some sort were of very early date; so were inscriptions, containing the
names, ages, virtues, and actions of the deceased, and the emblems of
their calling. Diogenes had the figure of a snarling cur engraved upon his
tablet. Lycurgus put an end to what he called "talkative gravestones." He
even forbade the inscription of the names, unless of men who died in
battle, or women in childbed.

Extravagance was, at one time, so notorious, in these matters, that Leon
forbade the erection of any mausoleum, which could not be erected by ten
men, in three days.

In Greece and Rome, panegyrics were often pronounced at the grave. Games
were sometimes instituted in honor of the eminent dead. Homer tells us
that Agamemnon's ghost and the ghost of Achilles had a long talk upon this
subject, telling over the number they had attended. After the funeral was
over, the company met at the house of some near relative, to divert their
sorrow; and, notwithstanding the abstemiousness of the Lacedemonians, they
had, I am compelled to believe, what is commonly called a good time. The
word, used to designate this kind of gathering, _perideipnon_, indicates
a very social meeting--Cicero translates this word _circumpotatio_.

Embalming was most in use with the Egyptians, and the process is described
by Herodotus and Diodorus. The brain was drawn through the nostrils with
an iron scoop, and the void filled with spices. The entrails were removed,
and the abdomen filled with myrrh and cassia. The body was next pickled in
nitre, for seventy days, and then enveloped in bandages of fine linen and
gums. Among the repositories of the curious, are bodies embalmed some
thousands of years ago. According to Herodotus, the place for the first
incision having been indicated, by the priest, the operator was looked
upon, with as much disgust, as we exhibit towards the common
hangman,--for, no sooner had he hastily made the incision, than he fled
from the house, and was immediately attacked with stones, by the
bystanders, as one, who had violated the dead. Rather an undesirable
office. After being embalmed, the body was placed in a box of sycamore
wood, carved to resemble the human form.

The story of Diogenes, who desired to be buried face downward, reminds me
of one, related by old Grossman, as we were coming, many years ago, from
the funeral of an old lady, who had been a terrible termagant. She
resembled, old Grossman said, a perfect fury of a woman, whose husband
insisted upon burying her, face downward; and, being asked the reason, for
this strange procedure, replied--"the more she scratches the deeper she
goes."




No. V.


Nil de mortuis nisi bonum. You will wonder where I got my Latin. If my
profession consisted of nothing but digging and filling up--dust to dust,
and ashes to ashes--I would not give a fig for it. To a sexton of any
sentiment it is a very different affair. I have sometimes doubted, if it
might not be ranked among the fine arts. To be sure, it is rather a
melancholy craft; and for this very reason I have tried to solace myself,
with the literary part of it. There is a great amount, of curious and
interesting reading upon these marble pages, which the finger of time is
ever turning over. I soon found, that a large part of it was in the Latin
tongue, and I resolved to master so much of it, as impeded my progress. I
have found, that many superb things are said of the defunct, in Latin,
which no person, however partial, would venture to say, in plain English.

The Latin proverb, at the head of this article, I saw, on the gravestone
of a poor fellow, who was killed, by a sort of devil incarnate, in the
shape of a rumseller, though some persons thought he was worried to death,
by moral suasion. _Nothing of the dead but what is good_: Well, I very
much doubt the wisdom of this rule. The Egyptians doubted it; and their
kings were kept in order, through a fear of the sentence to be passed upon
their character and conduct, by an assembly of notables, summoned
immediately after their decease. Montaigne says it is an excellent custom,
and to be desired by all good princes, who have reason to be offended,
that the memories of the wicked should be treated with the same respect,
as their own.

In England and our own Commonwealth, we have, legislatively, repudiated
this rule, in one instance, at least, until within a few years. I refer to
the case of suicide. Instead of considering the account balanced by death,
and treating the defunct with particular tenderness, because he was dead,
the sheriff was ordered to bury the body of every person, _felo de se_, at
the central point where four roads met, and to run a stake through his
body. This, to say nothing of its cheating our brotherhood out of burial
fees, seems a very awkward proceeding.

There is a pleasant tale, related of Sheriff Bradford, which I may repeat,
without marring the course of these remarks. Mr. Bradford was the politest
sheriff, that we ever had in Suffolk, not excepting Sheriff Sumner.
Sheriff Bradford was a real gentleman, dyed in the wool. It did one's
heart good to see him serve an attachment, or levy an execution. Instead
of knocking one down, and arresting him afterwards, Mr. Bradford made a
pleasant affair of it. It actually seemed, as if he employed a sort of
official ether, which took away the pain--he used, while placing his
bailiff in a lady's drawing-room, to bow and smile, so respectfully and
sympathizingly; and, in a sotto voice, to talk so very clerically, of the
instability of human affairs.

An individual, within the sheriff's precinct, cut his own throat. An
officious neighbor, who was rather curious to see the stake part
performed, brought tidings to Mr. Bradford, while at breakfast. The
informant ventured to inquire, at what time the performances would
commence. At five o'clock precisely, this afternoon, the sheriff replied.
He instantly dispatched a deputy to the son of the defunct, with a note,
full of the most respectful expressions of condolence, and informing him,
that the law required the sheriff to run a stake through his father's
body, _if to be found within his precinct_, and adding that he should call
with the stake, at 5 P. M. The body was, of course, speedily removed, and
_non est inventus_ was the end of the whole matter. Civilization
advanced--several of the upper ten thousand cut their throats, or blew
their brains out; and it would have been troublesome to carry out the
provisions of the law, and cost something for stakes. The law was
repealed.

Some sort of ignominious sepulture, for self-murderers, was in vogue, long
ago. Plato speaks of it, de legibus lib. ix., p. 660. The attempt to
shelter mankind from deserved reproach, by putting complimentary epitaphs
upon their gravestones, is very foolish. It commonly produces an opposite
effect. One would think these names were intended as a hint, for the
Devil, when he comes for his own--a sort of _passover_.

I am inclined to think, if a grand inquest of any county were employed, to
discover the last resting places of their neighbors and fellow-citizens,
having no other guide, but their respective epitaphs, the names and dates
having been previously removed or covered up, that inquest would be very
much at a loss, in the midst of such exalted virtues, and supereminent
talents, and extraordinary charities, and unbroken friendships, and great
public services.

Some inscriptions are, perhaps, too simple. In the burying-ground at the
corner of Arch and Sixth streets, Philadelphia, and very near that corner,
lies a large flat slab, with these words:

  "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin,
  1790."

In Exeter, N. H., I once read an epitaph in the graveyard, near the
Railroad Depot, in these words:

  "Henry's grave."

Pope's epitaph, in the garden of Lord Cobham, at Stow, on his Lordship's
Italian friend, was, doubtless, well-deserved, though savoring of
panegyric:

  To the memory
  of
  SIGNOR FIDO,
  an Italian of good extraction,
  who came into England
  not to bite us, like most of his countrymen,
  but to gain an honest livelihood.
  He hunted not after fame,
  yet acquired it.
  Regardless of the praise of his friends,
  But most sensible of their love,
  Though he lived among the great,
  He neither learned nor flattered any vice.
  He was no bigot,
  Though he doubted not the 39 articles.
  And, if to follow nature,
  And to respect the laws of society
  Be philosophy,
  He was a perfect philosopher,
  A faithful friend,
  An agreeable companion,
  A loving husband,
  Distinguished by a numerous offspring,
  All which he lived to see take good courses.
  In his old age he retired
  To the house of a clergyman, in the country,
  Where he finished his earthly race,
  And died an honor and an example to the whole species.
  Reader
  This stone is guiltless of flattery;
  For he, to whom it is inscribed,
  Was not a man
  but a
  GREYHOUND.




No. VI.


It could not have been particularly desirable to be the cook, or the
concubine, or the cup-bearer, or the master of the horse, or the
chamberlain, or the gentleman usher of a Scythian king, for Herodotus
tells us, book 4, page 280, that every one of these functionaries was
strangled, upon the body of the dead monarch.

Castellan, in his account of the Turkish Empire, says, that a dying Turk
is laid on his back, with his right side towards Mecca, and is thus
interred. A chafing-dish is placed in the chamber of death, and perfumes
burnt thereon. The Imam reads the thirty-sixth chapter of the Koran. When
death has closed the scene, a sabre is laid upon the abdomen, and the
next of kin ties up the jaw. The corpse is washed with camphor, wrapped in
a white sheet, and laid upon a bier.

The burial is brief and rapid. The body is never carried to the mosque.
Unlike the solemn pace of our own age and nation, four bearers, who are
frequently relieved, carry the defunct, almost on a run, to the place of
interment. Over the bier is thrown a pall; and, at the head, the turban of
the deceased. Women never attend. Mourning, as it is called, is never
worn. Christians are not permitted to be present, at the funeral of a
Mussulman.

It is not lawful to walk over, or sit upon, a grave. A post mortem
examination is never allowed, unless the deceased is so near confinement,
that there may be danger of burying the living with the dead. The corpse
is laid naked in the ground. The Imam kneels in prayer, and calls the name
of the deceased, and the name of his mother, thrice. The cemeteries of the
Turks are without the city, and thickly planted with trees, chiefly
cypress and evergreens. Near Constantinople there are several
cemeteries--the most extensive are at Scutari, on the Asiatic side of the
Bosphorus. There, as here, marble columns designate the graves of the
eminent and wealthy, but are surmounted with sculptured turbans. The
inscriptions are brief and simple. This is quite common: "_This world is
transient and perishable--today mine--tomorrow thine_."

The funeral ceremonies of the Hindoos are minute, trivial, and ridiculous,
in the extreme. A curious account may be found, in the Asiatic Researches,
vol. 7, page 264. Formal, or nominal obsequies are performed, says Mr.
Colebrooke, not less than ninety-six times, in every year, among the
Hindoos.

We do, for the dead, that, which we would have done for ourselves. The
desire of making a respectable corpse is quite universal. It has been so,
from the days of Greece and Rome, to the present. Such was the sentiment,
which caused the Romans to veil those, whose features were distorted in
death, as in the case of Scipio Africanus: such obsequies were called
_larvata funera_. Such has ever been the feeling, among the civilized and
the savage. Such was the opinion of Pope's Narcissa, when she exclaimed--

  One need not sure be ugly, though one's dead;
  And Betty, give this cheek a little red.

The Roman female corpses were painted. So are the corpses of the
inhabitants of the Polynesian Islands, and of New Zealand. When a New
Zealand chieftain dies, says Mr. Polack, the relatives and friends cut
themselves with muscle shells, and let blood profusely, because they
believe that ghosts, and especially royal ghosts, are exceedingly partial
to this beverage. The body is laid out by the priests. The head is adorned
with the most valued feathers of the albatross. The hair is anointed with
shark oil, and tied, at the crown, with a riband of _tapa_. The lobes of
the ears are ornamented with bunches of white, down, from the sea-fowl's
breast, and the cheeks are embellished with red ochre. The brow is
encircled with a garland of pink and white flowers of the _kaikatoa_.
Mats, wove of the silken flax, are thrown around the body, which is placed
upright. Skulls of enemies, slain in battle, are ranged at its feet. The
relics of ancestors, dug up for the occasion, are placed on platforms at
its head. A number of slaves are slaughtered, to keep the chieftain
company. His wives and concubines hang and drown themselves, that they
also may be of the party. The body lies in state, three or four days. The
priests flourish round it, with wisps of flax, to keep off the devil and
all his angels. The _pihe_, or funeral song, is then chanted, which I take
to be the Old Hundred of the New Zealanders, very much resembling the
_noenia_, or funereal songs of the Romans. At last, the body is buried,
with the favorite mats, muskets, trinkets, &c., of the deceased.

The Mandans, of the Upper Missouri, never inhume or bury their dead, but
place their bodies, according to Mr. Catlin, on light scaffolds, out of
the reach of the wolves and foxes. There they decay. This place of deposit
is without the village. When a Mandan dies, he is painted, oiled, feasted,
supplied with bow, arrows, shield, pipe and tobacco, knife, flint, steel,
and food, for a few days, and wrapped tightly, in a raw buffalo hide. The
corpse is then placed upon the scaffold, with its feet to the rising sun.
An additional piece of scarlet cloth is thrown over the remains of a chief
or medicine man. This cemetery is called, by the Mandans, the village of
the dead. Here the Mandans, especially the women, give daily evidence of
their parental, filial, and conjugal devotion. When the scaffold falls,
and the bones have generally decayed, the skulls are placed in circles,
facing inwards. The women, says Mr. Catlin, are able to recognize the
skulls of their respective husbands, by some particular mark; and daily
visit them with the best cooked dishes from their wigwams. What a lesson
of constancy is here! It is a pity, that so much good victuals should be
wasted; but what an example is this, for the imitation of Christian
widows, too many of whom, it is feared, resemble Goldsmith's widow with
the great fan, who, by the laws of her country, was forbidden to marry
again, till the grave of her husband was thoroughly dry; and who was
engaged, day and night, in fanning the clods. Some thirty years ago, my
business led me frequently to pass a stonecutter's door, a few miles from
the city; and, in a very conspicuous position, I noticed a gravestone,
sacred to the memory of the most affectionate husband, erected by his
devoted and inconsolable widow. It continued thus, before the
stonecutter's shop, for several years. I asked the reason. "Why," said the
stonecutter, "the inconsolable got married, in four months after, and I
have never got my pay. They pass this way, now and then, the inconsolable
and her new husband, and, when I see them, I always run out, and brush the
dust off."




No. VII.


I told that anecdote of the inconsolable widow, related in my last, to old
Grossman. He and Smith were helping me at a grave, in the Granary ground.
Bless my heart, how things have changed! We were digging near the Park
Street side--the old Almshouse fronted on Park Street then--and the
Granary stood where Park Street Church now stands, until 1809, and the
long building, called the Massachusetts Bank, covered a part of Hamilton
Place, and the house, once occupied by Sir Francis Barnard and afterwards
by Mr. Andrews, with its fine garden, stood at the corner of Winter
Street, on the site of the present granite block; and--but I am burying
myself, sexton like, in the grave of my own recollections--I say, I told
Grossman that story--the old man, when not translated by liquor, was
delightful company, in a graveyard--we were digging the grave of a young
widow's third husband. Grossman said she poisoned them. Smith was quite
shocked, and told him Mr. Deblois was looking over the Almshouse wall.

Grossman said he didn't mean, that she really gave all three of them
ratsbane; but it was clear enough, she was the end of them all; and he had
no doubt the widow would be a good customer, and give us two or three jobs
yet, before she left off. This led me to tell that story. Smith said there
was nothing half so restless, as an Irish widow. He said, that a young
Tipperary widow, Nelly McPhee, I think he called her, was courted, and
actually had an offer from Tooley O'Shane, on the way to her husband's
funeral. "She accepted, of course," said Grossman. "No, she didn't," said
Smith--"Tooley, dear," said she, "y'are too late: foor waaks ago it was, I
shook hands wi Patty Sweeney upon it, that I would have him, in a dacent
time, arter poor McPhee went anunderbood." "Well," said Grossman, "widows
of all nations are much alike. There was a Dutch woman, whose husband,
Diedrick Van Pronk, kicked the bucket, and left her inconsolable. He was
buried on Copp's Hill. Folks said grief would kill that widow. She had a
figure of wood carved, that looked very like her late husband, and placed
it in her bed, and constantly kept it there, for several months.

In about half a year, she became interested in a young shoemaker, who got
the length of her foot, and finally married her. He had visited the widow,
not more than a fortnight, when the servants told her they were out of
kindling stuff, and asked what should be done. After a pause, the widow
replied, in a very quiet way--"Maype it ish vell enough now, to sphlit up
old Van Pronk, vat ish up shtair."

Some persons have busied themselves, in a singular way, about their own
obsequies, and have left strange provisions, touching their remains.
Charles V., according to Robertson and other writers, ordered a rehearsal
of his own obsequies--his domestics marched with black tapers--Charles
followed in his shroud--he was laid in his coffin--the service for the
dead was chanted. This farce was, in a few days, followed by the real
tragedy; for the fatigue or exposure brought on fever, which terminated
fatally. Yet this story, which has long been believed, is distinctly
denied, by Mr. Richard Ford, in his admirable handbook for Spain; and this
denial is repeated, in No. 151 of the London Quarterly Review.

Several gentlemen, of the fancy, of the present age, and in this vicinity,
have provided their coffins, in their life time. The late Timothy Dexter,
commonly called Lord Dexter, of Newburyport; there was also an eminent
merchant, of this city. This is truly a Blue Beard business; and, beyond
its influence, in frightening children and domestics, it is difficult to
imagine the utility of such an arrangement. After a few visitations, these
coffins would probably excite just about as much of the _memento mori_
sensation, as the same number of meal chests.

Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, states that John Zisca, the general
of the Hussites, ordered a drum to be made of his skin, after he was dead,
persuaded, that the sound of it would terrify his foes.

When Edward I., of England, was dying, he bound his son, by an oath, to
boil his body, and, separating the bones, to carry them always before him
in battle, against the Scots; as though he believed victory to be chained
to his joints.

The bodies of persons, executed for crime, have, in different ages, and
among different nations, been delivered to surgeons, for dissection. It
seems meet and right, that those, who have been worse than useless, in
their lives, should contribute, in some small degree, to the common weal,
by such an appropriation of their carcasses. In some cases, these
miserable creatures have been permitted to make their own bargains, with
particular surgeons, beforehand; who have, occasionally, been taken in, by
paying a guinea to an unscrupulous fellow, who knew, though the surgeons
did not, that he was sentenced to be hung in chains, or, as it is commonly
called, gibbeted. The difficulty of obtaining subjects, for anatomical
purposes, has led to outrages upon the dead. Various remedies have been
proposed--none effectual. Surgical students, will not be deterred, by the
"Requiescat in pace," and the judges, between the demands of science and
of sympathy, have been in the predicament of asses, between two bundles of
straw. A poor vagabond, _nullius filius vel ignoti_, was snatched, by some
of these young medical dogs, some years ago, and Judge Parsons, who tried
the indictment, with a leaning to science, imposed a fine of five dollars.
Not many years after, a worthy judge, a reverencer of Parsons, and a
devotee to precedent, imposed a fine of five dollars, upon a young sloven,
who but half completed his job, and left a respectable citizen of Maine,
half drawn out from his grave, with a rope about his neck.

It seems scarcely conceivable, that a pittance should tempt a man to take
his fellow's life, that he might sell the body to a surgeon. In 1809,
Burke was executed in Edinburgh, for this species of murder. It was his
trade. Victims were lured, by this vampyre, to "the chambers of death,"
strangled or suffocated, without any visible mark of murder, and then sold
to the surgeons.

This trade has been attempted in London, at a much later day. Dec. 5,
1831, a wretch, named Bishop, and his accomplice, Williams, were hung, for
the murder of an Italian boy, Carlo Ferrari, poor and friendless, whose
body they sold to the surgeons. They confessed the murder of Ferrari and
several others, whose bodies were disposed of, in a similar manner.

From a desire to promote the cause of science, individuals have, now and
then, bequeathed their bodies to particular surgeons. These bequests have
been rarely insisted upon, by the legatees, and the intentions of the
testator have seldom been carried out, by the executors; a remarkable
exception, however, occurred, in the case of the celebrated Jeremy
Bentham, an account of which I must defer for the present, for funerals
are not the only things, which may be of unreasonable length.




No. VIII.


That eminent friend of science and of man, Jeremy Bentham, held the
prejudice against dissection, in profound contempt, and bequeathed his
body, for that object, to Dr. Fordyce, in 1769. Dr. Fordyce died, in 1792,
and Mr. Bentham, who survived him, and seems to have set his heart upon
being dissected, aware of the difficulties, that might obstruct his
purpose, chose three friends, from whom he exacted a solemn promise, to
fulfil his wishes. Accordingly, Mr. Bentham's body was carried to the Webb
Street School of Anatomy and Surgery, and publicly dissected, June 9,
1832, by Dr. Southwood Smith, who delivered an admirable lecture, upon
that occasion. I wholly object to such a practice, not, upon my honor,
from selfish motives, though it would spoil our business; but because the
moral injury, which would result, from such a disposition of mortal
remains, would be so much greater, than the surgical good. Mr. Bentham's
example is not likely to be commonly adopted.

A great amount of needless care is sometimes taken, by the living, in
regard to their relics, and their obsequies, which care belongs,
manifestly, to survivors. Akin to the preparation of one's coffin, and
storing it in one's domicil, for years perhaps, is the preparation of
one's shroud, and death cap, and all the et caetera of laying out. In
ninety and nine cases, in every one hundred, these things are done, for
the gratification of personal vanity, to attract attention, and to procure
a small sample of that lamentation, which the desolate widower and orphans
will pour forth, _one of these days_. It is observed, by one of the
daughters, that the mother is engaged in some mysterious piece of needle
work. "What is it, dear mother?" "Ah, my child, you should not inquire. We
all must die--it is your poor mother's winding sheet." The daughter is
convulsed, and pours forth a profluvium of tears. The judicious parent
soothes, and moralizes, and is delighted. The daughter flies to her
sisters; and, gathering in some private chamber, their tears are poured
forth, as the fact is announced. The husband returns--the eyes of his
household are like beet roots. They gather round their miserable meal. The
husband has been informed. The sweet-breads go down, untasted. How
grateful these evidences of sympathy to the wife and mother! A case
occurred in my practice, of this very description, where the lady
survived, married again, and the shroud, sallowed by thirty years' _non
user_, was given, in an hour of need, to a poor family.

Montaigne, vol. 1, page 17, Lond., 1811, says, "I was by no means pleased
with a story, told me of a relation of mine, that, being arrived at a very
old age and tormented with the stone, he spent the last hours of his life
in an extraordinary solicitude, about ordering the pomp and ceremony of
his funeral, pressing all the men of condition, who came to see him, to
promise their attendance at his grave."

Sophia Charlotte, the sister of George I., of England, a woman of
excellent understanding, was the wife of Frederic I. of Prussia. When
dying, one of her attendants observed how sadly the king would be
afflicted by her death. "With respect to him," she replied, "I am
perfectly at ease. His mind will be completely occupied in arranging the
ceremonial of my funeral; and, if nothing goes wrong in the procession, he
will be quite consoled for my loss."

Man goeth to his long home, as of yore, but the mourners do not go about
the streets, as they did, when I was young. The afternoons were given to
the tolling of bells, and funeral processions. This was about the period,
when the citizens began to feel their privations, as cow-yards grew
scarce; and, when our old friend, Ben Russell, told the public, in his
Centinel, that it was no wonder they were abominably crowded, and pinched
for gardens, for Boston actually contained seventeen thousand inhabitants.
I have seen a funeral procession, of great length, going south, by the Old
South Church, passing another, of equal length, going north, and delaying
the progress of a third, coming down School Street. The dead were not left
to bury the dead, in those days. Invitations to funerals were sent round,
as they are at present, to balls and parties. Othello Pollard and Domingo
Williams had full employment then. I have heard it stated of Othello,
that, having in hand two bundles of invitations, one for a fandango, of
some sort, and the other for a funeral, and being in an evil condition, he
made sad work in the delivery. Printed invitations are quite common, in
some countries.

I have seen one, in handbill form, for the funeral of a Madame Barbut, an
old widow, in Martinique, closing with these words, "_un de profundis, si
vous_," etc. Roman funerals were distinguished as _indictiva_ and
_tacita_: to the former, persons were invited, by a crier; the others were
private. The calling out, according to a prearranged list, which always
gave offence to somebody, was of old the common practice here. Such was
the usage in Rome, where the director was styled _dominus funeris_ or
_designator_. I doubt, if martinets are more tenacious of their rank, in
the army, than mourners, at a funeral.

There was a practice, in Rome, which would appear very grotesque, at the
present time. Pipers, _tibicines_, preceded the corpse, with players and
buffoons, who danced and sang, some of whom imitated the voice, manner and
gestures of the defunct. Of these, Suetonius gives some account, in his
lives of Tiberius, Vespasian, and Caesar.

The practice of watching a corpse, until the time of burying or burning,
was very ancient, and in use with the Greeks and Romans. The bodies of
eminent men were borne to the grave, by the most distinguished citizens,
not acting merely as pall bearers, but sustaining the body on their
shoulders. Suetonius states, that Julius Caesar was borne by the
magistrates; Augustus by the senators. Tacitus, Ann. iii. 2, informs us,
that Germanicus was supported, on the shoulders of the tribunes and
centurions. Children, who died, before they were weaned, were carried to
the pile by their mothers. This must have been a painful office.




No. IX.


When I first undertook, there was scarcely any variety, either in the
inscriptions, or devices, upon gravestones: death's heads and crossbones;
scythes and hour glasses; angels, with rather a diabolical expression;
all-seeing eyes, with an ominous squint; squares and compasses; such were
the common devices; and every third or fourth tablet was inscribed:

  Thou traveller that passest by,
  As thou art now, so once was I;
  As I am now, thou soon shalt be,
  Prepare for death and follow me.

No wonder people were wearied to death, or within an inch of it, by
reading this lugubrious quatrain, for the hundredth time. We had not then
learned, from that vivacious people, who have neither taste nor talent for
being sad, to convert our graveyards into pleasure grounds.

To be sure, even in my early days, and long before, an audacious spirit,
now and then, would burst the bonds of this mortuary sameness, and take a
bolder flight. We have an example of this, on the tablet of the Rev.
Joseph Moody, in the graveyard at York, Maine.

  Although this stone may moulder into dust,
  Yet Joseph Moody's name continue must.

And another in Dorchester:

  Here lies our Captain and Mayor of Suffolk,
                Was withall,
  A godly magistrate was he, and major general.
  Two troops of hors with him here came, such
                Worth his love did crave.
  Ten companyes also mourning marcht
                To his grave.
  Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as
                He has don;
  With Christ he lives now crowned, his name
        Was HUMPHREY ATHERTON,
        He dyed the 16 of September, 1661.

The following, also, in the graveyard at Attleborough, upon the tablet of
the Rev. Peter Thacher, who died in 1785, is no common effort, and in the
style of Tate and Brady:

  Whom Papists not
  With superstitious fire,
  Would dare to adore,
  We justly may admire.

And another, in the same graveyard, upon the slave, Caesar, is very clever.
The two last lines seem by another hand:

  Here lies the best of slaves,
    Now turning into dust,
  Caesar, the Ethiopian, craves
    A place, among the just.
  His faithful soul is fled
    To realms of Heavenly light,
  And by the blood that Jesus shed,
    Is changed from black to white.
  January 15, he quitted the stage,
  In the 77 year of his age.

An erratum, ever to be regretted, is certainly quite unexpected, on a
gravestone. In the graveyard at Norfolk, Va., there is a handsome marble
monument, sacred to the memory of Mrs. Margaret, &c., wife of, &c., who
died, &c.: "_Erratum, for Margaret read Martha_."

In olden time, there was a provost of bonny Dundee, and his name was
Dickson. He was a right jolly provost, and seemed resolved to have one
good joke beyond the grave. He bequeathed ten pounds, apiece, to three
men, remarkable above their fellows, for avarice, and dulness, on
condition, that they should join in the composition of his epitaph, in
rhyme and metre. They met--the task was terrible--but, Dr. Johnson would
have said, what will not a Scotchman undertake, for ten pounds! It need
not be long, said one--a line apiece, said the second--shall I begin? said
the third. This was objected to, of course; for whoever commenced was
relieved from the onus of the rhyme. They drew lots for this vantage
ground, and he, who won, after a copious perspiration, produced the
following line--

  Here lies Dickson, Provost of Dundee.

This was very much admired--brief and sententious--his name, his official
station, his death, and the place of his burial were happily compressed
in a single line. After severe exertion, the second line was produced:

  Here lies Dickson, here lies he.

It was objected, that this was tautological; and that it did not even go
so far as the first, which set forth the official character of the
deceased. It was said, in reply, by one of the executors, who happened to
be present, and who acted as _amicus poetae_, that the second line would
have been tautological, if it _had_ set forth the official station, which
it did not; and that as there had once been a female provost, the last
word effectually established the sex of Dickson, which was very important.
The third legatee, though he had leave of absence for an hour, and
refreshed his spirit, by a ramble on the Frith of Tay, was utterly unable
to complete the epitaph. At an adjourned meeting, however, he produced the
following line,

  Hallelujah! Hallelujee!

There are some beautiful epitaphs in our language--there are half a dozen,
perhaps, which are exquisitely so, and I believe there are not many more.
I dare not present them here, in juxtaposition with such light matter.
Swift's clever epitaph, on a miser, may more appropriately close this
article:

  Beneath this verdant hillock lies
  Demer, the wealthy and the wise.
  His heirs, that he might safely rest,
  Have put his carcass in a chest--
  The very chest, in which, they say,
  His other self, his money, lay.
  And if his heirs continue kind
  To that dear self he left behind,
  I dare believe that four in five
  Will think his better half alive.




No. X.


Catacombs, hollows or cavities, according to the etymological import of
the word, are, as every one knows, receptacles for the dead. They are
found in many countries; the most ancient are those of Egypt and Thebes,
which were visited in 1813 and 1818, by Belzoni. Psamatticus was a famous
fellow, in his time: he was the founder of the kingdom of Egypt; and,
after a siege of nearly three times the length of that at Troy, he
captured the city of Azotus. The flight of the house of our lady of
Loretto from Jerusalem, in a single night, would have seemed less
miraculous to the Egyptians, than the transportation of the sarcophagus of
Psamatticus, by a travelling gentleman, from Egypt to London. So it fell
out, nevertheless. Belzoni penetrated into one of the pyramids of Ghizeh;
he obtained free access to the tombs of the Egyptian kings, at
Beban-el-Malook; and brought to England the sarcophagus of Psamatticus,
exquisitely wrought of the finest Oriental alabaster. Verily kings have a
slender chance, between the worms and the lovers of _vertu_. "Here lie the
remains of G. Belzoni"--these brief words mark the grave of Belzoni
himself, at Gato, near Benin in Africa, where he died, in December, 1823,
safer in his traveller's robes, than if surrounded with aught to tempt the
hand of avarice or curiosity. The best account of the Egyptian catacombs
may be found in Belzoni's narrative, published in 1820.

The catacombs of Italy are vast caverns, in the via Appia, about three
miles from Rome. They were supposed to be the sepulchres of martyrs, and
have furnished more capital to priestcraft, for the traffic in relics,
than would have accrued, for the purposes of agriculture, to the fortunate
discoverer of a whole island of guano. The common opinion is, that they
were heathen sepulchres--the _puticuli_ of the ancients. The catacombs of
Naples, according to Bishop Burnet, are more magnificent than those of
Rome. Catacombs have been found in Syracuse and Catanea, in Sicily, and in
Malta.

Jahn, in his Archaeologia, sec. 206, speaks of extensive sepulchres, among
the Hebrews, otherwise called the _everlasting houses_; a term of peculiar
inapplicability, if we may judge from Maundrell's account of the shattered
and untenantable state, in which they are found. They are all located
beyond the cities and villages, to which they belong, that is, beyond
their more inhabited parts. The sepulchres of the Hebrew kings were upon
Mount Zion. Extensive caverns, natural or artificial, were the common
burying-places or catacombs. Gardens and the shade of spreading trees were
preferred, by some; these are objectionable, on the ground, suggested in a
former number: to alienate the estate and leave the dead, without the
right of removal, reserved, is, virtually, a transfer of one's
ancestors--and to remove them may be unpleasant. For this contingency the
Greeks and Romans provided, by reducing them to such a portable compass,
that a man might carry his grandfather in a quart bottle, and ten
generations, in the right line, in a wheelbarrow. Numerous catacombs are
to be found in Syria and Palestine. The most beautiful are on the north
part of Jerusalem. The entrance into these was down many steps. Some of
them consisted of seven apartments, with niches in the walls, for the
reception of the dead.

Maundrell, in his travels, page 76, writing of the "grots," as they were
styled, which have been considered the sepulchres of kings, denies that
any of the kings of Israel or Judah were buried there. He describes these
catacombs, as having necessarily cost an immense amount of money and
labor. The approach is through the solid rock, into an area forty paces
wide, cut down square, with exquisite precision, out of the solid mass. On
the south is a portico, nine paces long, and four broad, also cut from the
solid rock. This has an architrave, sculptured in the stone, of fruits and
flowers, running along its front. At the end of the portico, on the left,
you descend into the passage to the sepulchres. After creeping through
stones and rubbish, Maundrell arrived at a large room, seven or eight
yards square, cut also from the natural rock. His words are these:--"Its
sides and ceiling are so exactly square, and its angles so just, that no
architect, with levels and plummets, could build a room more regular."
From this room you pass into six more, of the same fabric; the two
innermost being deepest. All these apartments, excepting the first, are
filled around with stone coffins. They had been covered with handsome
lids, and carved with garlands; but, at the period of this visit, the
covers were mostly broken to pieces, by sacrilegious hands. Here is a
specimen of the "everlasting houses," and a solemn satire upon the best of
all human efforts--impotent and vain--to perpetuate that, which God
Almighty has destined to perish. But of this I shall have more to say,
when I come to sum up; and endeavor, from these dry bones, to extract such
wisdom as I can, touching the best mode, in which the living may dispose
of the dead, whose _memories_ they are bound to embalm, and whose _bodies_
are entitled to a decent burial.

The catacombs of the Hottentots are the wildest clefts and caverns of
their mountains. The Greenlanders, after wrapping the dead, in the skins
of wild animals, bear them to some far distant Golgotha. In Siberia and
Kamtschatka, they are deposited in remote caverns, with mantles of snow,
for their winding sheets. It is the valued privilege of the civilized and
refined to snuff up corruption, and swear it is a rose--to bury their
dead, in the very midst of the living--in the very tenements, in which
they breathe, the larger part of every seventh day--in the vaults of
churches, into which the mourners are expected to descend, and poke their
noses into the tombs, to prove the full measure of their respect for the
defunct. But the tombs are faithfully sealed; and, when again opened,
after several months, perhaps, the olfactory nerves are not absolutely
staggered--possibly a dull smeller may honestly aver, that he perceives
nothing--what then? The work of corruption has gone forward--the gases
have escaped--how and whither? Subtle as the lightning, they have
percolated, through the meshes of brick and mortar; and the passages or
gashes, purposely left open in the walls, have given them free egress to
the outward air.

Very probably neither the eye nor the nose gave notice of their escape.
Doubtless, it was gradual. The yellow fever, I believe, has never been
seen nor smelt, during its most terrible ravages. I do remember--not an
apothecary--but a greenhorn, who, in 1795, heard old Dr. Lloyd say the
yellow fever was in the air, and who went upon the house top, next morning
early, to look for it--but he saw it not; and, ever after, said he did not
think much of Dr. Lloyd. I have something more to say of burials under
churches, and in the midst of a dense population.




No. XI.


A few more words on the subject of burying the dead under churches, and in
the midst of a dense population. If men would adopt the language of the
prologue to Addison's Cato--"_dare to have sense yourselves_"--the folly
and madness of this practice would be sufficiently apparent. Upon some
simple subjects, one grain of common sense is better, than any quantity of
the uncommon kind. But it is hard to make men think so. They prefer
walking by faith--they must consult the savans--the doctors. Now I think
very well of a good, old-fashioned doctor--one doctor I mean--but, when
they get to be gregarious, my observation tells me, no good can possibly
come of it. At post mortems, and upon other occasions, I have, in my
vocation, seen them assembled, by half dozens and dozens, and I have come
to the conclusion, that no body of men ever look half so wise, or feel
half so foolish.

Some of the faculty were consulted, in this city, about thirty years ago,
upon the question of burying under churches; and, on the strength of the
opinion given, a large church, not then finished, was provided with tombs,
and the dead have been buried therein, ever since. Now I think the public
good would have been advanced, had those doctors set their faces against
the selfish proposition. That it is a nuisance, I entertain not the
slightest doubt. The practice of burying in their own houses, among the
ancients, gave place to burying without the city, or to cremation. The
unhealthiness, consequent upon such congregations of the dead, was
experienced at Rome. The inconvenience was so severely felt, in a certain
quarter, that Augustus gave a large part of one of the cemeteries to
Maecenas, who so completely purified it, and changed its character, that it
became one of the healthiest sites in Rome, and there he built a splendid
villa, to which Augustus frequently resorted, for fresh air and repose.
Horace alludes to this transformation, Sat. 8, lib. 1, v. 10, and the
passage reminds one of the change, which occurred in Philadelphia, when
the Potter's field was beautifully planted, and transformed into
Washington Square.

  Hoc miserae plebi stabat commune sepulchrum,
  Pantolabo scurrae; Nomentanoque nepoti.
  Mille pedes in fronte, trecentos cippus in agrum
  Hic dabat, heredes monumentum ne sequeretur.
  Nunc licet Esquiliis habitare salubribus, atque
  Aggere in apprico spatiari, qua modo tristes
  Albis informem spectabant ossibus agrum.

Millingen, in his work on Medical jurisprudence, page 54, remarks--"From
time immemorial medical men have pointed out to municipal authorities the
dangers, that arise from burying the dead, within the precincts of cities,
or populous towns."

The early Christians buried their martyrs, and afterwards eminent
citizens, in their temples. Theodosius, in his celebrated code, forbade
the practice, because of the infectious diseases.

Theodolphus, the Bishop of Orleans, complained to Charlemagne, that vanity
and the love of lucre had turned churches into charnel houses, disgraceful
to the church, and dangerous to man.

Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, first sanctioned the use of churches,
for charnel houses, in 758--though Augustine had previously forbidden the
practice. As Sterne said, in another connection, "they manage these
matters much better, in France;" there Maret, in 1773, and Vicq d'Azyr, in
1778, pointed out the terrible consequences, so effectually, that none,
but dignitaries, were suffered to be buried in churches. In 1804,
inhumation, in the cities of France, was wholly forbidden, without any
exception. The arguments produced, at that time, are not uninteresting, at
this, or any other. In Saulien, about 140 miles from Paris, in the year
1773, the corpse of a corpulent person was buried, March 3, under the
church of St Saturnin. April 20, following, a woman was buried near it.
Both had died of a prevailing fever, which had nearly passed away. At the
last interment a foul odor filled the church, and out of 170 persons
present, 149 were attacked with the disease. In 1774 at Nantes, several
coffins were removed, to make room for a person of note; and fifteen of
the bystanders died of the emanation, shortly after. In the same year, one
third of the inhabitants of Lectouse died of malignant fever, which
appeared, immediately after the removal of the dead from a burial-ground,
to give place to a public structure.

The public mind is getting to be deeply impressed, upon this subject.
Cities, and the larger towns are, in many instances, building homes for
the dead, beyond the busy haunts of the living. The city of London has,
until within a few years, been backward, in this sanatory movement. At
present, however, there are six public cemeteries, in the suburbs of that
city, of no inconsiderable area: the Kensall Green Cemetery, established
by act 2 and 3 of William IV., in 1832, containing 53 acres--the South
Metropolitan, by act 6 and 7 William IV., 1836, containing 40 acres--the
Highgate and Kentish Town, by act 7 and 8 William IV., containing 22
acres--the Abney Park, at Stoke Newington, containing 30 acres, 1840--the
Westminster, at Earlscourt, Kensington road, 1840--and the Nunhead,
containing 40 acres, 1840. Paris has its beautiful Pere La Chaise,
covering the site of the house and extensive grounds, once belonging to
the Jesuit of that name, the confessor of Louis XIV., who died in 1709.
New York has its Greenwood; Philadelphia its Laurel Hill; Albany its Rural
Cemetery; Baltimore its Green Mount; Rochester its Mount Hope; we our
Mount Auburn; and our neighboring city of Roxbury has already
selected--and well selected--a local habitation for the dead, and wants
nothing but a name, which will not long be wanting, nor a graceful
arrangement of the grounds, from the hands of one, to whom Mount Auburn is
indebted, for so much of all that is admirable there. I shall rejoice, if
the governors of this cemetery should decree, that no _tomb_ should ever
be erected therein--but that the dead should be laid in their _graves_.

My experience has supplied me with good and sufficient reasons--one
thousand and one--against the employment of tombs, some of which reasons I
may hereafter produce, though the honor of our craft may constrain me to
keep silence, in regard to others. Some very bitter family squabbles have
arisen, about tombs. Two deacons, who were half brothers, had a serious
and lasting dispute, respecting a family tomb. They became almost furious;
one of them solemnly protesting, that he would never consent to be buried
there, while he had his reason, and the other declaring, that he would
never be put into that tomb, while God spared his life. This, however, is
not one of those one thousand and one reasons, against tombs.




No. XII.


The origin of the catacombs of Paris is very interesting, and not known to
many. The stone, of which the ancient buildings of Paris were constructed,
was procured from quarries, on the banks of the river Bieore. No system
had been adopted in the excavation; and, for hundreds of years, the
material had been withdrawn, until the danger became manifest. There was a
vague impression, that these quarries extended under a large part of the
city. In 1774 the notice of the authorities was called to some accidents,
connected with the subject. The quarries were then carefully examined, by
skilful engineers; and the startling fact clearly established, that the
southern parts of Paris were actually undermined, and in danger of
destruction. In 1777 a special commission was appointed, to direct such
works, as might be necessary. On the very day of its appointment, the
necessity became manifest--a house, in the Rue d'Enfer, sunk ninety-two
feet. The alarm--the fear of a sudden engulphment--was terrible.
Operatives were set at work, to prop the streets, roads, palaces, and
churches. The supports, left by the quarriers, without any method or
judgment, were insufficient--in some instances, they had given way, and
the roof had settled. Great fear was felt for the aqueduct of Arcueil,
which supplied the fountains of Paris, and which passed over this ground,
for it had already suffered some severe shocks; and it was apprehended,
not simply that the fountains would be cut off, but that the torrent would
pour itself into these immense caverns. And now the reader will inquire,
what relation has this statement to the catacombs? Let us reply.

For hundreds of years, Paris had but one place of interment, the Cemetery
des Innocens. This was once a part of the royal domains; it lay without
the walls of Paris; and was given, by one of the earlier kings, to the
citizens, for a burying-place. It is well known, that this gift to the
people was intended to prevent the continuance of the practice, then
common in Paris, of burying the dead, in cellars, courts, gardens,
streets, and public fields, within the city proper. In 1186 this cemetery
was surrounded with a high wall, by Philip Augustus, the forty second king
of France. It was soon found insufficient for its purpose; and, in 1218,
it was enlarged, by Pierre de Nemours, Bishop of Paris. Generation after
generation was deposited there, stratum super stratum, until the
surrounding parishes, in the fifteenth century, began to complain of the
evil, as an insufferable nuisance. Such a colossal mass of putrescence
produced discomfort and disease. Hichnesse speaks of several holes about
Paris, of great size and depth, in which dead bodies were deposited, and
left uncovered, till one tier was filled, and then covered with a layer of
earth, and so on, to the top. He says these holes were cleared, once in
thirty or forty years, and the bones deposited, in what was called "_le
grand charnier des Innocens_;" this was an arched gallery, surrounding the
great cemetery.

With what affectionate respect we cherish the venerated name of Francois
Pontraci! _Magnum et venerabile nomen!_ He was the last--the last of the
grave-diggers of _le grand charnier des Innocens_! In the days of my
novitiate, I believed in the mathematical dictum, which teaches, that two
things cannot occupy the same place, at the same time. But that dictum
appears incredible, while contemplating the operations of Pontraci. He was
a most accomplished stevedore in his department--the Napoleon of the
charnel house, the very king of spades. All difficulties vanished, before
his magic power. Nothing roused his indignation so much, as the
suggestion, that a cemetery was _full_--_c'est impossible!_ was his
eternal reply. To use the terms of another of the fine arts, the touch of
Pontraci was irresistible--his _handling_ masterly--his _grouping_
unsurpassed--and his _fore-shortening_ altogether his own. _Condense!_
that word alone explained the mystery of his great success. Knapsacks are
often thrown aside, _en route_, in the execution of rapid movements. In
the grand march of death, Pontraci considered coffins an encumbrance.
Those wooden surtouts he thought well enough for parade, but worse than
useless, on a march. He had a poor opinion of an artist, who could not
find room, for twenty citizens, heads and heels, in one common grave.
Madame Pontraci now and then complained, that the fuel communicated a
problematical flavor to the meat, while roasting--"_c'est odeur, qui a
rapport a une profession particuliere, madame_," was the reply of
Pontraci. The register, kept by this eminent man, shows, that, in thirty
years, he had deposited, in this cemetery, ninety thousand bodies. It was
calculated, that twelve hundred thousand had been buried there, since the
time of Philip Augustus. In 1805, the Archbishop of Paris, under a resolve
of the Council of State, issued a decree, that the great cemetery should
be suppressed and evacuated. It was resolved to convert it into a market
place. The happy thought of converting the quarries into catacombs
fortunately occurred, at that period, to M. Lenoie, lieutenant general of
police. Thus a receptacle was, at once, provided for the immense mass of
human remains, to be removed from the Cemetery des Innocens. A portion of
the quarries, lying under the _Plaine de Mont Souris_, was assigned, for
this purpose. A house was purchased with the ground adjoining, on the old
road to Orleans. It had, at one time, belonged to Isouard, a robber, who
had infested that neighborhood. A flight of seventy-seven steps was made,
from the house down into the quarries; and a well sunk to the bottom, down
which the bones were to be thrown. Workmen were employed, in constructing
pillars to sustain the roof, and in walling round the part, designed for
_le charnier_. The catacombs were then consecrated, with all imaginable
pomp.

In the meantime, the vast work of removing the remains went forward, night
and day, suspended, only, when the hot weather rendered it unsafe to
proceed. The nocturnal scenes were very impressive. A strange
resurrection, to be sure! Bonfires burnt brightly amid the gloom. Torches
threw an unearthly glare around, and illuminated these dealings with the
dead. The operatives, moving about in silence, bearing broken crosses, and
coffins, and the bones of the long buried, resembled the agents of an
infernal master. All concerned had been publicly admonished, to reclaim
the crosses, tombstones, and monuments of their respective dead. Such, as
were not reclaimed, were placed in the field, belonging to the house of
Isouard. Many leaden coffins were buried there, one containing the remains
of Madame de Pompadour. During _the_ revolution, the house and grounds of
Isouard were sold as national domain, the coffins melted, and the
monuments destroyed. The catacombs received the dead from other
cemeteries; and those, who fell, in periods of commotion, were cast there.
When convents were suppressed, the dead, found therein, were transferred
to this vast omnibus.

During the revolution, the works were neglected--the soil fell in; water
found its way to the interior; the roof began to crumble; and the bones
lay, in immense heaps, mixed with the rubbish, and impeding the way. And
there, for the present, we shall leave them, intending to resume this
account of the catacombs of Paris, in a future number.




No. XIII.


In 1810, the disgusting confusion, in the catacombs of Paris, was so much
a subject of indignant remark, that orders were issued to put things in
better condition. A plan was adopted, for piling up the bones. In some
places, these bones were thirty yards in thickness; and it became
necessary to cut galleries through the masses, to effect the object
proposed.

There were two entrances to the catacombs--one near the barrier d'Enfer,
for visitors--the other, near the old road to Orleans, for the workmen.
The staircase consisted of ninety steps, which, after several windings,
conducted to the western gallery, from which others branched off, in
different directions. A long gallery, extending beneath the aqueduct of
Arcueil, leads to the gallery of Port Mahon, as it is called. About a
hundred yards from this gallery, the visitor comes again to the passage to
the catacombs; and, after walking one hundred yards further, he arrives at
the vestibule, which is of an octagonal form. This vestibule opens into a
long gallery, lined with bones, from top to bottom. The arm, leg, and
thigh bones are in front, compactly and regularly piled together. The
monotony of all this is tastefully relieved, by three rows of skulls, at
equal distances, and the smaller bones are stowed behind. How very French!
This gallery leads to other apartments, lined with bones, variously and
fancifully arranged. In these rooms are imitation vases and altars,
constructed of bones, and surmounted with skulls, fantastically arranged.
This really seems to be the work of some hybrid animal--a cross, perhaps,
between the Frenchman and the monkey.

These crypts, as they are called, are designated by names, strangely
dissimilar. There is the Crypte de Job, and the Crypte d'Anacreon--the
Crypte de La Fontaine, and the Crypte d'Ezekiel--the Crypte d'Hervey, and
the Crypte de Rousseau. An album, kept here, is filled with mawkish
sentimentality, impertinent witticism, religious fervor, and infidel
bravado.

The calculations vary, as to the number of bodies, whose bones are
collected here. At the lowest estimate, the catacombs are admitted to
contain the remains of three millions of human beings.

While contemplating the fantastical disposition of these human relics, one
recalls the words of Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia--"Antiquity
held too light thoughts from objects of mortality, while some drew
provocatives of mirth from anatomies, and jugglers showed tricks with
skeletons."

Here then, like "_broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show_," are the broken
skeletons of more than three millions of human beings, paraded for public
exhibition! Most of them, doubtless, received Christian burial, and were
followed to their graves, and interred, with more or less of the forms and
ceremonies of the Catholic church, and deposited in the earth, there to
repose in peace, till the resurrection! How applicable here the language
of the learned man, whom we just quoted--"When the funeral pyre was out,
and the last valediction over, men took a lasting adieu of their interred
friends, little expecting the curiosity of future ages should comment upon
their ashes; and having no old experience of the duration of their relics,
held no opinion of such after-considerations. But who knows the fate of
his bones, or how often he is to be buried! Who hath the oracle of his
ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?" How little did the gay and
guilty Jeane Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, imagine this rude
handling of her mortal remains! She was buried in the Cemetery des
Innocens, in 1764--and shared the common exhumation and removal in 1805.

It seems to have been the desire of mankind, in every age and nation, to
repose in peace, after death. In conformity with this desire, the
cemeteries of civilized nations, the morais of the Polynesian isles, and
the cities of the dead, throughout the world, have been, from time
immemorial, consecrated and tabooed. So deep and profound has been the
sentiment of respect, for the feelings of individuals, upon this subject,
that great public improvements have been abandoned, rather than give
offence to a single citizen.

Near forty years ago, a meeting was held in Faneuil Hall, to consider a
proposition for some change, in the Granary burying-ground, which
proposition, was rejected, by acclamation. During the Mayoralty, of the
elder Mr. Quincy, it was the wish of very many to continue the mall,
through the burial-ground, in the Common. The consent of all, but two or
three, was obtained. They were offered new tombs, and the removal of their
deceased relatives, under their own supervision, at the charge of the
city. These two or three still objected, and this great public improvement
was abandoned; and with manifest propriety. The basis of this sentiment is
a deep laid and tender respect for the ashes of the dead, and an earnest
desire, that they may rest, undisturbed, till the resurrection; and this
is the very last thing, which is likely to befall the tenant of a TOMB;
for the owner--and tombs, like other tenements, will change owners--in the
common phraseology of leases, has a right to enter, "to view, and expel
the lessee"--if no survivor is at hand to prevent, and the new proprietor
has other tenants, whom he prefers for the dark and gloomy mansion. And
they, in process of time, shall be served, in a similar manner, by
another generation. This is no exception; it is the general rule, the
common course of dealing with the dead. A tomb, containing the remains of
several generations, may become, by marriage, the property of a stranger.
His wife dies. He marries anew. New connections beget new interests. The
tomb is _useless_, to him, because it is _full_. A general clearance is
decreed. A hole is dug in the bottom of the tomb; the coffins, with an
honorable exception, in respect to his late beloved, are broken to pieces;
and the remains cast into the pit, and covered up. The tablet, overhead,
perpetuates the lie--"Sacred to the memory," &c. However, the tomb is
white-washed, and swept out, and a nice place he has made of it! All this,
have I seen, again and again.

When a tomb is opened, for a new interment, dilapidated coffins are often
found lying about, and bones, mud, and water, on the bottom. We always
make the best of it, and stow matters away, as decently as we can. We are
often blamed for time's slovenly work. Grossman said, that a young
spendthrift, who really cared for nothing but his pleasures, was, upon
such an occasion, seized with a sudden fit of reverence for his great
grandfather, and threatened to shoot Grossman, unless he produced him,
immediately. He was finally pacified by a plain statement, and an
exhibition of the old gentleman's bones behind the other coffins. We could
not be looked upon, more suspiciously, by certain inconsiderate persons,
if we were the very worms that did the mischief. As a class, we are as
honorable as any other. There are bad men, in every calling. There is no
crime, in the decalogue, or out of it, which has not been committed, by
some apostle, in holy orders. Doctors and even apothecaries are,
occasionally, scoundrels. And, in a very old book, now entirely out of
print, I have read, that there was, in the olden time, a lawyer, _rara
avis_, who was suspected of not adhering, upon all occasions, to the
precise truth. Tombs are nuisances. I will tell you why.




No. XIV.


Tombs are obviously more liable to invasion, with and without assistance,
from the undertaker and his subalterns, than graves. There may be a few
exceptions, where the sexton does not cooperate. If a grave be dug, in a
suitable soil, of a proper depth, which is some feet lower than the usual
measure, the body will, in all probability, remain undisturbed, for ages,
and until corruption and the worm shall have done their work, upon flesh
and blood, and decomposition is complete. An intelligent sexton, who keeps
an accurate chart of his diggings, will eschew that spot. On the other
hand, every coffin is exposed to view, when a tomb is opened for a new
comer. On such occasions, we have, sometimes, full employment, in driving
away idlers, who gather to the spot, to gratify a sickly curiosity, or to
steal whatever may be available, however "sacred to the memory," &c. The
tomb is left open, for many hours, and, not unfrequently, over night, the
mouth perhaps slightly closed, but not secured against intruders. During
such intervals, the dead are far less protected from insult, and the
espionage of idle curiosity, than the contents of an ordinary toy-shop, by
day or night. Fifty years ago, curiosity led me to walk down into a vault,
thus left exposed. No person was near. I lifted the lid of a coffin--the
bones had nearly all crumbled to pieces--the skull remained entire--I took
it out, and, covering it with my handkerchief, carried it home. I have, at
this moment, a clear recollection of the horror, produced in the mind of
our old family nurse, by the exhibition of the skull, and my account of
the manner, in which I obtained it. "What an awful thing it would be," the
dear, good soul exclaimed, "if the resurrection should come this very
night, and the poor man should find his skull gone!" My mother was
informed; and I was ordered to take it back immediately: it was then dark;
and when I arrived at the tomb, in company with our old negro, Hannibal,
to whom the office was in no wise agreeable, the vault was closed. I
deposited the skull on the tomb, and walked home in double quick time,
with my head over my shoulder, the whole way. I relate this occurrence, to
show how motiveless such trespasses may be.

There is a morbid desire, especially in women, which is rather difficult
of analysis, to descend into the damp and dreary tomb--to lift the coffin
lid--and look upon the changing, softening, corrupting features of a
parent or child--to gaze upon the mouldering bones; and thus to gather
materials, for fearful thoughts, and painful conversations, and frightful
dreams!

A lady lost her child. It died of a disease, not perfectly intelligible to
the doctor, who desired a post mortem examination, which the mother
declined. He urged. She peremptorily refused. The child was buried in the
Granary ground. A few months after, another member of the same family was
buried in the same vault. The mother, notwithstanding the remonstrances of
her husband, descended, to look upon the remains of her only daughter;
and, after a careful search, returned, in the condition of Rachel, who
would not be comforted, because it was not. In a twofold sense, it was
_not_. The coffin and its contents had been removed. The inference was
irresistible. The distress was very great, and fresh, upon the slightest
allusion, to the end of life. Cases of premature sepulture are, doubtless,
extremely rare. That such, however, have sometimes occurred, no doubt has
been left upon the mind, upon the opening of tombs. These are a few only
of many matters, which are destined, from time to time, to be brought to
light, upon the opening of _tombs_, and which are not likely to disturb
the feelings of those whose deceased relatives and friends are committed
to well-made _graves_. On all these occasions, ignorance is bliss.

Tombs, not only such as are constructed under churches, but in common
cemeteries, are frequently highly offensive, on the score of emanation.
They are liable to be opened, for the admission of the dead, at all times;
and, of course, when the worms are riotous, and corruption is rankest, and
the pungent gases are eminently dangerous, and disgusting. Even when
closed, the intelligible odor, arising from the dissolving processes,
which are going on within, is more than living flesh and blood can well
endure. Again and again, visitors at Mount Auburn have been annoyed, by
this effluvium from the tombs. By the universal adoption of well-made
graves, this also may be entirely avoided.

When a family becomes, or is supposed to be, extinct, or has quitted the
country, their dead kindred are usually permitted to lie in peace, in
their _graves_. It is not always thus, if they have had the misfortune to
be buried in _tombs_. To cast forth a dead tenant, from a solitary
_grave_, that room might be found for a new comer, would scarcely be
thought of; but the temptation to seize five or six _tombs_, at once, for
town's account, on the pretext, that they were the tombs of extinct
families, has, once, at least, proved irresistible, and led to an outrage,
so gross and revolting, in this Commonwealth, that the whole history of
cemeteries in our country cannot produce a parallel. In April, 1835, the
board of health, in a town of this Commonwealth, gave notice, in a
_single_ paper, that certain tombs were dilapidated; that no
representative of former owners could be found; and that, if not claimed
and repaired, within sixty days, those tombs would be sold, to pay
expenses, &c. In fulfilment of this notice, in September following, the
entire contents of five tombs were broken to pieces, and shovelled out. In
one of these tombs there were thirty coffins, the greater part of which
were so sound, as to be split with an axe. A portion of the silver plate,
stolen by the operatives employed by the board of health, was afterwards
recovered, bearing date, as recently as 1819. The board of health then
advertised these tombs for sale, in _two_ newspapers. Nothing of these
brutal proceedings was known to the relatives, until the deed of barbarity
was done. Now it can scarcely be credited, that, in that very town, a few
miles from it, and in this city, there were then living numerous
descendants, and relatives of those, whose tombs had thus been violated.
Some of the dead, thus insulted, had been the greatest benefactors of that
town, so much so, that a narrative of their donations has been published,
in pamphlet form. Among the direct descendants were some of the oldest and
most distinguished families of this city, whose feelings were severely
tried by this outrage. The ashes of the dead are common property. The
whole community bestirs itself in their defence. The public indignation
brought those stupid and ignorant officials to confession and atonement,
if not to repentance. They passed votes of regret; replaced the ashes in
proper receptacles within the tombs; and put them in order, at the public
charge. A meagre and miserable atonement, for an injury of this peculiar
nature; and, though gracelessly accorded,--extorted by the stringency of
public sentiment, and the fear of legal process,--yet, on the whole, the
only satisfaction, for a wrong of this revolting and peculiar character.
The insecurity of tombs is sufficiently apparent. An empty tomb may be
attached by creditors; but, by statute of Mass., 1822, chap. 93, sec. 8,
it cannot be, while in use, as a cemetery. But no law, of man or nature,
can prevent the disgusting effects, and mortifying casualties, and
misconstructions of power, which have arisen, and will forever continue to
arise, from the miserable practice of burying the dead, in _tombs_.




No. XV.


There is, doubtless, something not altogether agreeable, in the thought of
being buried alive. Testamentary injunctions are not uncommon, for the
prevention of such a calamity. As far, as my long experience goes, the
percentage is exceedingly small. About twenty-five years ago, some old
woman was certain, that a person, lately buried, was not exactly dead. She
gave utterance to this certainty--there was no _evidence_, and ample room
therefore for _faith_. The defunct had a little property--it was a clear
case, of course--his relatives had buried him alive, to get possession! A
mob gathered, in King's Chapel yard; and, to appease their righteous
indignation, the grave was opened, the body exposed, doctors examined, and
the mob was respectfully assured, that the man was dead--dead as a door
nail. A proposition to bury the old woman, in revenge, was rejected
immediately. But she did not give up the point--they never do. She
admitted, that the party was dead, but persisted, that his death was
caused, by being buried alive.

Some are, doubtless, still living, who remember the affair in the Granary
yard. Groans had been heard there, at night. Some person had been buried
alive, beyond all doubt. A committee was appointed to visit the spot. Upon
drawing near, subdued laughter and the sounds of vulgar merriment arose,
from one of the tombs--a light was seen glimmering from below--the strong
odor, not of corruption, but of mutton chops, filled the air. Some
vagabonds had cleared the tomb, and taken possession, and, with broken
coffins for fuel, had found an appetite, among the dead. The occupation of
tombs, by the outcasts of society, was common, long before the Christian
era.

That the living have been buried, unintentionally, now and then, is
undoubtedly true. Such has probably been the case, sometimes, under
catalepsy or trance, the common duration of which is from a few hours, to
two or three days; but of which Bonet, _Medic., Septentrion, lib. 1, sec.
16, chap. 6_, gives an example, which lasted twenty days. Bodies have been
found, says Millingen, in his Curiosities of Medical Experience, page 63,
where the miserable victims have devoured the flesh of their arms; and he
cites John Scott and the Emperor Zeno, as examples. Plato recites the case
of a warrior, who was left ten days, as dead, upon the field of battle,
and came to life, on his way to the sepulchre. In Chalmers' Memoir of the
Abbe Prevot, it is related, that he was found, by a peasant, having fallen
in an apoplectic fit. The body was cold, and carried to a surgeon, who
proceeded to open it. During the process, the Abbe revived, only, however,
to die of the wound, inflicted by the operator.

The danger of burying alive has been noticed by Pineau, _Sur le danger des
Inhumations precipitees, Paris, 1776_. Dr. John Mason Good, vol. 4, page
613, remarks, that catalepsy has been mistaken for real death; and, in
countries where burial takes place speedily, it is much to be feared,
that, in a few instances, the patient has been buried alive. A case of
asphyxy, of a singular kind, is stated, by Mr. Pew, and recited by Dr.
Good, of a female, whose interment was postponed, for a post mortem
examination--most fortunately--for the first touch of the scalpel brought
her to life. Diemerbroeck, _Tractat de Peste_, _Lib. 4, Hist. 8_, relates
the case of a rustic, who was laid out for interment. Three days passed
before the funeral. He was supposed to have died of the plague. When in
the act of being buried, he showed signs of life, recovered, and lived
many years. Dr. Good observes, that a critical examination of the region
of the heart, and a clear mirror, applied to the mouth and nostrils, will
commonly settle the question of life or death; but that even these signs
will sometimes fail. What then shall be done? Matthaeus Hildanus and
others, who give many stories of this kind, say--wait for the infallible
signs of putrefaction. It may be absurd to wait too long; it is indecorous
to inhume too soon.

The case, recited by Mr. Pew, reminds me of Pliny's account of persons who
came to life, on the funeral pile. "Aviola in rogo revixit: et, quoniam
subveniri non potuerat, praevalente flamma, vivus crematus est. Similis
causa in L. Lamia, praetorio viro, traditur."--Lib. 7, sec. 53.

Old Grossman's stories, in this connection, were curious enough. He gave a
remarkable account of a good old deacon, who had a scolding wife. She fell
sick and died, as was supposed, and was put in her coffin, and screwed
down, and lifted. Everything, as Grossman said, went on very pleasantly,
till they began to descend into the tomb, when the sexton, at the foot,
slipped, and the coffin went by the run, and struck violently against the
wall of the tomb. One instant of awful silence was followed, by a shrill
shriek from the corpse--"_Let me out--let me out!_" The poor old deacon
wrung his hands, and looked, as Grossman expressed it, "real melancholy."
The lid was unscrewed, as soon as possible, and the lady, less in sorrow,
than in anger, insisted on immediate emancipation. All attempts to
persuade her to be still, and go home as she came, for the decency of the
thing, were unavailing. The top of the coffin was removed. The deacon
offered to help her out. She refused his proffered hand; and, doubling her
fist in his face, told him he was a monster, and should pay for it, and
insisted on walking back, in her death clothes. About six months after,
she died, in good earnest. "The poor deacon," said Grossman, "called us
into a private room, and reminding us of the sad turn things took, last
time, begged us to be careful; and told us, if all things went right, he
would treat us at his store, the next day. He retailed spirit, as all the
deacons did, being the very persons, pointed at, by the finger of the law,
as men of sober lives and conversations."

Grossman told another story. We could scarcely credit it. He offered to
swear to it; but we begged he wouldn't. It was of a woman, who was a cider
sot. Her husband had tried all sorts of preventive experiments, in vain.
His patience was exhausted. He tapped a barrel, and let her drink her
fill. She and the barrel gave out together. She was buried. The coldness
of the tomb brought her to life. She felt around the narrow domicil, in
which she lay. Her consciousness, that she was in her coffin, and that she
had been buried, was clear enough; but her other impressions were rather
cloudy. It never occurred to her, that she had been buried alive. She
imagined herself, in another world, and, knocking, as hard as possible,
against the lid and sides of her coffin, she exclaimed, "Good people of
the upper world, if ye have got any good cider, do let us have a mug of
it." Luckily, the mouth of the tomb had not been closed, and, when the
sexton came to close it, he was scandalized, of course, to hear a thirsty
corpse, crying for cider; but the woman was soon relieved from her
predicament. The Mandans, whose custom of never burying their dead, I have
alluded to, may possibly be influenced, by a consideration of this very
contingency. In some places, bodies have been placed in a lighted room,
near the charnel house, there to remain, till the signs of corruption
could no longer be mistaken. The tops of the coffins being loose; and a
bell so connected with the body, as to ring on the slightest movement.




No. XVI.


My profession is very dear to me; and nothing would gratify me more, than
to see my brother artists restored to their original dignity. It is quite
common to look upon a sexton, as a mere grave-digger, and upon his
calling, as a cold, underground employment, divested of everything like
sentiment or solemnity.

In the olden time, the sexton bore the title of sacristan. He had charge
of the sacristy, or vestry, and all the sacred vessels and vestments of
the church. At funerals, his office corresponded with that of the Roman
_dominus funeris_ or _designator_, referred to by Horace, Ep. i., 7,
6--and by Cicero to Atticus, iv., 2. He was, in point of law, considered
as having a freehold, in his office, and therefore he could not be
deprived, by ecclesiastical censure. It was his duty to attend upon the
rector, and to take no unimportant part, in all those inestimable forms,
and ceremonies, and circumgyrations, and genuflections, which render the
worship of the high church so exceedingly picturesque. The sexton of the
Pope's chapel was selected, from the order of the hermits of St.
Augustine, and was commonly a bishop. His title was _prefect of the Pope's
sacristy_. When the Pope said mass, the sexton always tasted the bread and
wine first. And, when the Pope was desperately sick, the sexton gave him
extreme unction. I recite these facts, that the original dignity of our
office may be understood.

The employment of sextons has been rather singular, in some countries. M.
Outhier states, that, when he visited the church of St. Clara, at
Stockholm, he observed the sexton, during the sermon, with a long rod,
waking those, who had fallen asleep.

I fully believe, that the sextons of this city are all honorable men; and
yet it cannot be denied, that the solemn occasion, upon which their
services are required, is one, upon which, pride and sensibility forbid
all higgling, on the part of the customer. However oppressively the charge
of consigning a relative to the ground may bear, upon one of slender
means, the tongue of complaint is effectually tied. The consciousness of
this furnishes a strong temptation to imposition. The same desire to
promote the public good, which induced Mr. Bentham to give his body for
dissection, has led distinguished individuals, now and then, to prescribe
simple and inexpensive obsequies, for themselves.

Livy says, book 48, sec. 10, that Marcus Emilius Lepidus directed his sons
to bury him without parade, and at a very small charge. As he was the
Pontifex Maximus, possessed of wealth, and of a generous spirit, the
promotion of the public good was the only motive. Cheating at funerals was
as common at Athens, as at Rome. Demades, as Seneca relates, book 6, ch.
33, _de beneficiis_, condemned an unprincipled Athenian sexton, for
extortion, in furnishing out funerals. The friends and relatives are so
busy with their sorrow, that they have neither time nor taste, for the
examination of accounts, and, least of all, such as concern the obsequies
of near friends. I was never more forcibly impressed with the truth, that,
where the carcass is, there the vultures will be gathered together, than
in the little island of St. Croix, during the winter of 1840. I was there
with a friend, a clergyman, who visited that island, for the restoration
of his wife's health. She died. Her remains were never buried there, but
brought to this city, and here interred. In that island there is a
tribunal, called the _Dealing Court_, analogous to the court of probate,
or orphan's court, in this country. In less than forty-eight hours, a bill
was presented, from this court, for "_dealing_" with the estate of the
deceased. She had no estate; no act had been done. "True, but such is the
custom of our island--such is the law of Denmark." After taking counsel,
the bill was paid. The Danish Lutheran is the established religion of the
island. The Episcopal lives, by sufferance. A few days after this lady's
decease, a bill was presented, from the officers of the _Danish Lutheran_
church, for granting permission to dig her grave, in the _Episcopal_
ground. It was objected, that no permission had been asked, that no burial
had been intended, that the body had been placed in spirits, for its
removal to the United States. It was replied, "Such is the usage of the
island; the permission is granted, and may be used or not; such is the law
of Denmark."

Shortly after this, a bill was presented, for digging the grave. It was in
vain to protest, as before, and to assert, that no grave had been dug. The
answer was the same; "the grave must be paid for; it will be dug or not,
as you wish; such is the usage of the island; such is the law of Denmark."
In due time, another demand was made, for carrying round invitations, and
attendance upon the funeral. It was useless to say, that no invitations
were sent--no funeral was had. "Such is the custom of the island; such is
the law of Denmark." The reader, by this time, will be satisfied, that
something is rotten in Denmark; this narrative appears so very improbable,
that I deem it right to assure the reader the circumstances are stated
faithfully, and that the clergyman referred to, is still living.

In commending a respectable frugality, in our dealings with the dead, not
only with regard to their obsequies, but in relation to sepulchral and
monumental expenditure, I oppose the interest of our profession, and
cannot be accused of any selfish motive. A chaste simplicity is due to the
occasion; for surely no more illy chosen hour can be given to the
gratification of pride, than that, in which the very pride of man is
humbled in the dust. How often have my thoughts descended from the costly,
sculptured obelisk, to the carnival of worms below!

A well-set example of comely modesty, in these matters, would be
productive of much advantage to the community. The man of common means, if
he happen to be also a man of common sense, will not imitate the man of
opulence, in the splendor of his equipage or furniture. But he will too
readily enter into what he deems a righteous rivalry of funereal parade,
and leave his debts unpaid, rather than abate one cubit, in the height of
his monument, or obelisk. It is not now the custom to bury with the dead,
or deposit with their ashes, as in urn burial, articles of use and value
to the living. We have been taught, that those graves are the least likely
to be violated, in which are deposited little else than mortal remains.
But, in a certain sense, the dead can no longer be said to carry nothing
with them. The silver and its workmanship alone, which are annually
buried, furnish no inconsiderable item.

The outer coffin of Nathan Meyer Rothschild "was of fine oak, and so
handsomely carved and decorated with massive silver handles, at both sides
and ends, that it appeared more like a cabinet, or splendid piece of
furniture, than a receptacle of the dead. A raised tablet of oak, on the
breast, was carved with the arms of the deceased." The arms of the
deceased! Very edifying to the worms, those cunning operatives, who work
so skilfully, in silence and darkness! The arms of the deceased! Matthew
Prior had some shrewd notions of heraldry. He wrote his own epitaph--

  Heralds and nobles, by your leave,
    Here lie the bones of Matthew Prior;
  The son of Adam and of Eve;
    Let Bourbon and Nassau go higher.




No. XVII.


My attention has been called, by a young disciple of the great Pontraci,
"a sexton of the new school," to an interesting anecdote, which I have
heard related, in days by-gone, and which has, more than once, appeared in
print. It is, by many, believed, that the remains of Major Pitcairn, which
were supposed to have been sent home to England, are still in this
country, and that those of Lieutenant Shea were transmitted, by mistake.
Whether _he_ or _Shea_ will ever remain doubtful. Major Pitcairn was
killed, as is well known, at the battle of Bunker's Hill. Shea died of
inflammation on the brain. They were alike in size. On the top of the head
of the body, selected by the sexton of Christ Church, as the remains of
Major Pitcairn, it is stated, there was a blistering plaster; and, from
this circumstance, the impression has arisen, that the monument in
Westminster Abbey, however sacred to the memory of Pitcairn, stands over
the remains of Lieutenant Shea. There is not more uncertainty, in relation
to the remains of Major Pitcairn, than has existed, in regard to the
individual, by whose hands he fell; though it is now agreed, that he was
shot by a black soldier, named Salem. Fifty men, at the lowest estimate,
have died in the faith, that they killed Pitcairn. He was a man of large
stature, fearless, and ever in the van, as he is represented by Marshall,
at the battle of Lexington.

He was a palpable mark, for the muskets and rifles of the sharp-shooters.
It is not improbable, that fifty barrels were levelled at his person, when
he fell; and hence fifty claimants, for the merit of Pitcairn's
destruction. Upon precisely similar grounds, rest the claims of Col.
Johnson, for the killing of Tecumseh.

When the flesh has gone and nothing but the bones remain, it is almost
impossible, to recognize the remains of any particular individual, buried
hastily, as the fallen commonly are, after a battle, in one common grave;
unless we are directed, by certain external indicia. In April, 1815, I
officiated at the funeral of Dr. John Warren, brother of the patriot and
soldier, who fell so gloriously, at Bunker's Hill, and whose death was
said, by the British General, Howe, to be an offset, for five hundred men.
Dr. James Jackson delivered the eulogy, on Dr. John Warren, in King's
Chapel. General Warren was buried in the trenches, where he so bravely
fell; and, when disinterred, in 1776, for removal to Boston, the remains
were identified, by an inspection of the teeth, upon which an operation
had been performed, the evidence of which remained. This testimony was
doubtless corroborated, by the mark of the bullet on his forehead; for he
was not a man to be wounded in the back. "The bullet which terminated his
life," says Mr. A. H. Everett in his memoir, "was taken from the body, by
Mr. Savage, an officer in the Custom House, and was carried by him to
England. Several years afterwards, it was given by him at London, to the
Rev. Mr. Montague of Dedham, Massachusetts, and is now in possession of
his family."

These translations of the dead, from place to place, are full of
uncertainty; and hence has arisen a marvellous and successful system of
jugglery and priestcraft. The first translation of this kind, stated by
Brady, in his Clavis, is that of Edward, king of the West Saxons. He was
removed with great pomp from Wareham to the minster of Salisbury. Three
years only had passed since his burial, and no error is imputed, in the
relation. In the year 359, the Emperor Constantius was moved, by the
spirit, to do something in this line; and he caused the remains of St.
Andrew and St. Luke to be translated, from their original resting-places,
to the temple of the twelve apostles, at Constantinople. Some little
doubt might be supposed to hang over the question of identity, after such
a lapse of years, in this latter case. From this eminent example, arose
that eager search for the remains of saints, martyrs, and relics of
various descriptions, which, for many centuries, filled the pockets of
imposters, with gold, and the world, with idolatry. So great was the
success of those, engaged in this lucrative employment, that John the
Baptist became a perfect hydra. Heads of this great pioneer were
discovered, in every direction. Some of the apostles were found, upon
careful search, to be centipedes; and others to have had as many hands as
Briareus. These monstrosities were too vast to be swallowed, without a
miracle. Father John Freand, of Anecy, assured the faithful, that God was
pleased to multiply these remains for their devotion. Consecration has
been refused to churches, unprovided with relics. Their production
therefore became indispensable. All the wines, produced in _Oporto_ and
_Zeres de la Frontera_, furnish not a fourth part of the liquor, drunken,
in London alone, under the names of Port and Sherry; and the bones of all
the martyrs, were it possible to collect them, would not supply the
occasions of the numerous churches, in Catholic countries. Misson says
eleven holy lances are shown, in different places, for the true lance,
that pierced the side of Christ.

Many egregious sinners have undoubtedly been dug up, and their bones
worshipped, as the relics of genuine saints. Though not precisely to our
purpose, it may not be uninteresting to the reader, to contemplate a
catalogue of some few of the relics, exhibited to the faithful, as they
are enumerated, by Bayle, Butler, Misson, Brady and others;--the lance--a
piece of the cross--one of Christ's nails--five thorns of the crown--St.
Peter's chain--a piece of the manger--a tooth of John the Baptist--one of
St. Anne's arms--the towel, with which Christ wiped the feet of the
apostles--one of his teeth--his seamless coat--the hem of his garment,
which cured the diseased woman--a tear, which he shed over Lazarus,
preserved by an angel, who gave it, in a vial, to Mary Magdalene--a piece
of St. John the Evangelist's gown--a piece of the table cloth, used at the
last supper--a finger of St. Andrew--a finger of John the Baptist--a rib
of our Lord--the thumb of St. Thomas--a lock of Mary Magdalene's hair--two
handkerchiefs, bearing impressions of Christ's face; one sent by our Lord,
as a present to Aquarus, prince of Edessa; and the other given by him, at
the foot of the cross, to a holy woman, named Veronica--the hem of
Joseph's garment--a feather of the Holy Ghost--a finger of the Holy
Ghost--a feather of the angel Gabriel--the waterpots, used at the marriage
in Galilee--Enoch's slippers--a vial of the sweat of St. Michael, at the
time of his set-to with the Devil. This short list furnishes a meagre
show-box of that immense mass of merchandise, which formed the staple of
priestcraft. These pretended relics were not only procured, at vast
expense, but were occasionally given, and received, as collateral security
for debts. Baldwin II. sent the point of the holy lance to Venice, as a
pledge for a loan. It was redeemed by St. Lewis, King of France, who
caused it to be placed in the holy chapel at Paris. The importation of
this species of trumpery, into England, was forbidden, by many statutes;
and, by 3. Jac. i., cap. 26, justices were empowered to search houses for
such things, and to burn them.

It is pleasant to turn from these shadowy records to matters of reality
and truth. There was an exhumation, some years ago, of the remains of a
highly honorable and truly gallant man, for the purpose of returning them
to his native land. Suspicions of a painful nature arose, in connection
with that exhumation. Those suspicions were cleared away, most happily, by
a venerable friend of mine, with whom I have conversed upon that
interesting topic. I will give some account of the removal of Major
Andre's remains, in my next.




No. XVIII.


Major John Andre, aid-de-camp to General Clinton, and adjutant general of
the British army, was, as every well-read school-boy knows, hanged as a
spy, October 2, 1780, at Tappan, a town of New York, about five miles from
the north bank of the Hudson.

In June, 1818, by a vote of the Legislature of New York, the remains of
that gallant Irishman, Major General Richard Montgomery, were removed from
Quebec. Col. L. Livingston, his nephew, superintended the exhumation and
removal. An old soldier, who had attended the funeral, forty-two years
before, pointed out the grave. These relics were committed to the ground,
once more, in St. Paul's church-yard in New York; and, by direction of the
Congress of the United States, a costly marble monument was erected there,
executed by M. Cassieres, at Paris. Nothing was omitted of pomp and
pageantry, in honor of the gallant dead.

Still the remains of Andre, whose fate was deeply deplored, however just
the punishment--still they continued, in that resting place, humble and
obscure, to which they had been consigned, when taken from the gallows.
The lofty honors, bestowed upon Montgomery, operated as a stimulus and a
rebuke. Mr. James Buchanan, the British consul, admits their influence, in
his memorable letter. He addressed a communication to the Duke of York,
then commander-in-chief of the British army, suggesting the propriety of
exhumating the remains of Andre, and returning them to England. The
necessary orders were promptly issued, and Mr. Buchanan made his
arrangements for the exhumation.

Mr. Demarat, a Baptist clergyman, at Tappan, was the proprietor of the
little field, where the remains of Andre had been buried, and where they
had reposed, for forty-one years, when, in the autumn of 1821, Mr.
Buchanan requested permission to remove them. His intentions had become
known--some human brute--some Christian dog, had sought to purchase, or to
rent, the field of Mr. Demarat, for the purpose of extorting money, for
permission to remove these relics. But the good man and true rejected the
base proposal, and afforded every facility in his power.

A narrow pathway led to the eminence, where Andre had suffered--the grave
was there, covered with a few loose stones and briars. There was nothing
beside, to mark the spot--I am wrong--woman, who was last at the cross,
and first at the tomb, had been there--there was a peach tree, which a
lady had planted at the head, and whose roots had penetrated to the very
bottom of the shallow grave, and entered the frail shell, and enveloped
the skull with its fibres. Dr. Thacher, in a note to page 225 of his
military journal, says, that the roots of two cedar trees "had wrapped
themselves round the skull bone, like a fine netting." This is an error.
Two cedars grew near the grave, which were sent to England, with the
remains.

The point, where these relics lay, commanded a view of the surrounding
country, and of the head-quarters of Washington, about a mile and a half
distant. The field, which contained about ten acres, was cultivated--a
small part only, around the consecrated spot, remained untilled. Upon the
day of the exhumation, a multitude had gathered to the spot. After digging
three feet from the surface, the operative paused, and announced, that his
spade had touched the top of the coffin. The excitement was so great, at
this moment, that it became necessary to form a cordon, around the grave.
Mr. Buchanan proceeded carefully to remove the remaining earth, with his
hands--a portion of the cover had been decomposed. When, at last, the
entire top had been removed, the remains of this brave and unfortunate
young man were exposed to view. The skeleton was in perfect order.
"There," says Mr. Buchanan, "for the first time, I discovered that he had
been a small man."

One by one, the assembled crowd passed round, and gazed upon the remains
of Andre, whose fate had excited such intense and universal sensibility.
These relics were then carefully transferred to a sarcophagus, prepared
for their reception, and conveyed to England. They now repose beneath the
sixth window, in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. The monument near
which they lie, was designed by Robert Adam, and executed by Van Gelder.
Britannia reclines on a sarcophagus, and upon the pedestal is
inscribed--"Sacred to the memory of Major Andre, who, raised by his merit,
at an early period of life, to the rank of Adjutant General of the British
forces in America, and, employed in an important but hazardous enterprise,
fell a sacrifice to his zeal for his king and country, on 2d of October,
1780, aged twenty-nine, universally beloved and esteemed by the army, in
which he served, and lamented even by his foes. His generous sovereign,
King George III., has caused this monument to be erected." Nothing could
have been prepared, in better taste. Here is not the slightest allusion to
that great question, which posterity, having attained full age, has
already, definitively, settled--the justice of his fate. A box, wrought
from one of the cedar trees, and lined with gold, was transmitted to Mr.
Demarat, by the Duke of York; and a silver inkstand was presented to Mr.
James Buchanan, by the surviving sisters of Major Andre.

Thus far, all things were in admirable keeping. It was, therefore, a
matter of deep regret, that Mr. James Buchanan should have thought proper
to disturb their harmony, by suggestions, painfully offensive to every
American heart. Those suggestions, it is true, have been acknowledged to
be entirely groundless. But that gentleman's original letter, extensively
circulated here, and transmitted to England, has, undoubtedly, conveyed
these offensive insinuations, where the subsequent admission of his error
is not likely to follow. Mr. Buchanan, on the strength of some loose
suggestions, at Tappan, and elsewhere, corroborated by an examination of
the contents of the coffin, had assumed it to be true, or highly probable,
that the body of Andre had been stripped, after the execution, from
mercenary, or other equally unworthy, motives. This impression he hastily
conveyed to the world. I will endeavor to present this matter, in its true
light, in my next communication.




No. XIX.


After having removed the entire cover of Andre's coffin, "I descended,"
says Mr. Buchanan, "and, with my own hands, raked the dust together, to
ascertain whether he had been buried in his regimentals, or not, as it was
rumored, among the assemblage, that he was stripped: for, if buried in his
regimentals, I expected to find the buttons of his clothes, which would
have disproved the rumor; but I did not find a single button, nor any
article, save a string of leather, that had tied his hair." Mr. Buchanan
had evidently arrived at the conclusion, that Andre had been stripped. In
this conclusion he was perfectly right. He had also inferred, that this
act had been done, with base motives. In this inference, he was perfectly
wrong. "Those," continues he, "who permitted the outrage, or who knew of
it, had no idea, that the unfeeling act they then performed would be
blazoned to the world, near half a century, after the event." All this is
entirely gratuitous and something worse. General Washington's
head-quarters were near at hand. Every circumstance was sure to be
reported, for the excitement was intense; and the knowledge of such an
act, committed for any unworthy purpose, would have been instantly
conveyed to Sir Henry Clinton, and blazoned to the world, some forty
years before the period of Mr. Buchanan's discovery.

Dr. James Thacher, in his military journal, states, that Andre was
executed "in his royal regimentals, and buried in the same." Dr. Thacher
was mistaken, and when he saw the letter of Mr. Buchanan, and the
offensive imputation it contained, he investigated the subject anew, and
addressed a letter to that gentleman, which was received by him, in a
becoming spirit, and which entirely dissipated his former impressions. In
that letter, Dr. Thacher stated, that he was within a few yards of Andre,
at the time of his execution, and that he suffered in his regimentals.
Supposing, as a matter of course, that Andre would be buried in them, Dr.
Thacher had stated that, also, as a fact, though he did not remain, to
witness the interment. He then refers to a letter, which he has discovered
in the Continental Journal and Weekly Advertiser, of October 26, 1780,
printed in Boston, by John Gill. This letter bears date, Tappan, October
2, the day of the execution, and details all the particulars, and in it
are these words--"_He was dressed in full uniform; and, after the
execution, his servant demanded the uniform, which he received. His body
was buried near the gallows_." "This," says Dr. Thacher, "confirms the
correctness of my assertion, that he suffered in his regimentals, but not
that they were buried with the body. I had retired from the scene, before
the body was placed in the coffin; but I have a perfect recollection of
seeing him hand his hat to the weeping servant, while standing in the
cart."

Mr. Buchanan observes, that an aged widow, who kept the toll-gate, on
hearing the object stated, was so much gratified, that she suffered all
carriages to pass free. "It marks strongly," he continues, "the sentiments
of the American people at large, as to a transaction, which a great part
of the British public have forgotten." This passage is susceptible of a
twofold construction. It may mean, that this aged widow and the American
people at large were unanimous, in lamenting the fate of Major Andre--that
they most truly believed him to have been brave and unfortunate. It may
also mean, that they considered the fate of Andre to have been
unwarranted. Posterity has adjusted this matter very differently. Nearly
sixty-eight years have passed. All excitement has long been buried, in a
deeper grave than Andre's. A silent admission has gone forth, far and
wide, of the perfect justice of Andre's execution. A board of general
officers was appointed, to prepare a statement of his case. Greene,
Steuben, and Lafayette were of that board. They were perfectly unanimous
in their opinion. Prodigious efforts were made on his behalf. He himself
addressed several letters to Washington, and one, the day before his
death, in which he says: "Sympathy towards a soldier will surely induce
your excellency and a military tribunal to adapt the mode of my death to
the feelings of a man of honor." The board of officers, as Gordon states,
were induced to gratify this wish, with the exception of Greene. He
contended, that the laws of war required, that a spy should be hung; the
adoption of any less rigorous mode of punishment would excite the belief,
that palliatory circumstances existed in the case of Andre, and that the
decision might thereby be brought into question. His arguments were sound,
and they prevailed.

Major Andre received every attention, which his condition permitted. He
wrote to Sir Henry Clinton, Sept. 29, 1780, three days before his
execution--"I receive the greatest attention from his excellency, General
Washington, and from every person, under whose charge I happen to be
placed." Captain Hale, like Major Andre, was young, brave, amiable, and
accomplished. He entered upon the same perilous service, that conducted
Andre to his melancholy fate. Hale was hanged, as a spy, at Long Island.
Thank God, the brutal treatment he received was not retaliated upon Andre.
"The provost martial," says Mr. Sparks, "was a refugee, to whose charge he
was consigned, and treated him, in the most unfeeling manner, refusing the
attendance of a clergyman, and the use of a bible; and destroying the
letters he had written, to his mother and friends."

The execution of Major Andre was in perfect conformity with the laws of
war. Had Sir Henry Clinton considered his fate unwarranted, under any just
construction of those laws, he would undoubtedly have expressed that
opinion, in the general orders, to the British army, announcing Major
Andre's death. These orders, bearing date Oct. 8, 1780, refer only to his
_unfortunate fate_. They contain not the slightest allusion to any
supposed injustice, or unaccustomed severity, in the execution, or the
manner of it.

The fate of Andre might have been averted, in two ways--by a steady
resistance of Arnold's senseless importunity, to bring him within the
American lines--and by a frank and immediate presentation of Arnold's
pass, when stopped by Paulding, Williams, and Van Wart. His loss of
self-possession, at that critical moment, is remarkable, for, as
Americans, they would, in all human probability, have suffered him to
pass, without further examination; and, had they been of the opposite
party, they would certainly have conducted him to some British post--the
very haven where he would be.




No. XX.


How shall _we_ deal with the dead? We have considered the usages of many
nations, in different ages of the world. Some of these usages appear
sufficiently revolting; especially such as relate to secondary burial, or
the transfer of the dead, from their primary resting-places, to vast,
miscellaneous receptacles. The desire is almost universal, that, when
summoned to lie down in the grave, the dead may never be disturbed, by the
hand of man--that our remains may return quietly to dust--unobserved by
mortal eye. There is no part of this humiliating process, that is not
painful and revolting to the beholder. Of this the ancients had the same
impression. Cremation and embalming set corruption and the worm at
defiance. Other motives, I am aware, have been assigned for the former.
The execution of popular vengeance upon the poor remains of those, whose
memory has become odious, during a revolution, is not uncommon. A
ludicrous example of this occurred, when Santa Anna became unpopular, and
the furious mob seized his leg, which had been amputated, embalmed, and
deposited among the public treasures, and cooled their savage anger, by
kicking the miserable member all over the city of Montezuma.

In the time of Sylla, cremation was not so common as interment; but Sylla,
remembering the indignity he had offered to the body of Marius, enjoined,
that his own body should be burnt. There was, doubtless, another motive
for this practice among the ancients. The custom prevailed extensively, at
one time, of burying the dead, in the cellars of houses. I have already
referred to the Theban law, which required the construction of a suitable
receptacle for the dead, in every house. Interment certainly preceded
cremation. Cicero De Legibus, lib. 2, asserts, that interment prevailed
among the Athenians, in the time of Cecrops, their first king. In the
earlier days of Rome, both were employed. Numa was _buried_ in conformity
with a special clause in his will. Remus, as Ovid, Fast. iv. 356, asserts,
was _burnt_. The accumulation of dead bodies in cellars, or subcellars,
must have become intolerable. This practice undoubtedly gave rise to the
whole system of household gods, Lares, Lemures, Larvae, and Manes. Such an
accumulation of ancestors, it may well be supposed, left precious little
room for the amphorae of Chian, Lesbian, and Falernian.

Young aspirants sometimes inwardly opine, that their living ancestors take
up too much room. Such was very naturally the opinion of the ancients, in
relation to the dead. Like Francois Pontraci, they began to feel the
necessity of condensation; and cremation came to be more commonly adopted.
The bones of a human being, reduced to ashes, require but little room; and
not much more, though the decomposition by fire be not quite perfect. Let
me say to those, who think I prefer cremation, as a substitute for
interment, that I do not. It has found little favor for many centuries. It
seems to have been employed, in the case of Shelley, the poet. However
desirable, when the remains of the dead were to be deposited in the
dwelling-houses of the living, cremation and urn burial are quite
unnecessary, wherever there is no want of ground for cemeteries, in proper
locations. The funereal urns of the ancients were of different sizes and
forms, and of materials, more or less costly, according to the ability and
taste of the surviving friends. Ammianus Marcellinus relates, that
Gumbrates, king of Chionia, near Persia, burnt the body of his son, and
placed the ashes in a _silver_ urn.

Mr. Wedgewood had the celebrated Portland vase in his possession, for a
year, and made casts of it. This was the vase, which had been in
possession of the Barberini family, for nearly two centuries, and for
which the Duke of Portland gave Mr. Hamilton one thousand guineas. In the
minds of very many, the idea of considerable size has been associated with
this vase. Yet, in fact, it is about ten inches high, and six broad. The
Wedgewood casts may be seen, in many of our glass and china shops. This
vase was discovered, about the middle of the sixteenth century, two and a
half miles from Rome, on the Frescati road, in a marble sarcophagus,
within a sepulchral chamber. This, doubtless, was a funereal urn. The
urns, dug up, in Old Walsingham, in 1658, were quite similar, in form, to
the Portland vase, excepting that they were without ears. Some fifty were
found in a sandy soil, about three feet deep, a short distance from an old
Roman garrison, and only five miles from Brancaster, the ancient
Branodunum. Four of these vases are figured, in Browne's Hydriotaphia;
some of them contained about two pounds of bones; several were of the
capacity of a gallon, and some of half that size. It may seem surprising,
that a human body can be reduced to such a compass. "How the bulk of a man
should sink into so few pounds of bones and ashes may seem strange unto
any, who consider not its constitution, and how slender a mass will remain
upon an open and urging fire, of the carnal composition. Even bones
themselves, reduced into ashes, do abate a notable proportion." Such are
the words of good old Sir Thomas.

It was an adage of old, "He that lies in a golden urn, will find no quiet
for his bones." If the costliness of the material offered no temptation to
the avarice of man, still, after centuries have given them the stamp of
antiquity, these urns and their contents become precious, in the eyes of
the lovers of _vertu_. There is no security from impertinent meddling with
our remains, so certain, as a speedy conversion into undistinguishable
dust. Sir Thomas Browne manifestly inclined to cremation. "To be gnawed,"
says he, "out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking bowls, and
our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are
tragical abominations, escaped in burning burials." Such anticipations are
certainly unpleasant. An ingenious device was adopted by Alaricus--he
appointed the spot for his grave, and directed, that the course of a river
should be so changed, as to flow over it.

It has been said, that certain soils possess a preserving quality. I am
inclined to think the secret commonly lies, in some peculiar,
constitutional quality, in the dead subject; for, wherever cases of
remarkable preservation have occurred, corruption has been found generally
to have done its full day's work, on all around. If such quality really
exist in the soil, it is certainly undesirable. Those who were opposed to
the evacuation of the Cemetery des Innocens, in the sixteenth century,
attempted to set up in its favor the improbable pretension, that it
consumed bodies in nine days. Burton, in his description of
Leicestershire, states, that the body of Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, "was
found perfect, and nothing corrupted, the flesh not hardened, but in
color, proportion and softness, like an ordinary corpse, newly to be
interred," after seventy-eight years' burial.

A remarkable case of posthumous preservation occurred, in a village near
Boston. The very exalted character of the professional gentleman, who
examined the corpse, after it had been entombed, for forty years, gives
the interest of authenticity to the statement. Justice Fuller, the
father-in-law of that political victim, General William Hull, _who was
neither a coward nor a traitor_, was buried in a family tomb, in Newton
Centre. It was ascertained, and, from time to time, reported, that the
body remained uncorrupted and entire. Mr. Fuller was about 80, when he
died, and very corpulent. About forty years after his burial, Dr. John C.
Warren, by permission of the family, with the physician of the village,
and other gentlemen, examined the body of Mr. Fuller. The coffin was
somewhat decomposed. So were the burial clothes. The body presented,
everywhere, a natural skin, excepting on one leg, on which there had been
an ulcer. There decomposition had taken place. The skin was generally of a
dark brown color, and hard like dried leather; and so well preserved,
about the face, that persons, present with Dr. Warren, said they should
have recognized the features of Justice Fuller. My business lies not with
the physiology, however curious the speculation may be. Were it possible,
by any means, to perpetuate the dead, in a similar manner, it would be
wholly undesirable. Dust we are, and unto dust must we return. The
question is still before us,--How shall _we_ deal with the dead?




No. XXI.


It is commonly supposed, that the burial of articles of value with the
dead, is a practice confined to the Indian tribes, and the inhabitants of
unenlightened regions; who fancied, that the defunct were gone upon some
far journey, during which such accompaniments would be useful. Such is not
the fact. Chilperic, the fourth king of France, came to the throne A. D.
456. In 1655 the tomb of Chilperic was accidentally discovered, in
Tournay, "restoring unto the world," saith Sir Thomas Browne, vol. 3, p.
466, "much gold adorning his sword, two hundred rubies, many hundred
imperial coins, three hundred golden bees, the bones and horse-shoes of
his horse, interred with him, according to the barbarous magnificence of
those days, in their sepulchral obsequies." Stow relates, in his survey of
London, that, in many of the funeral urns, found in Spitalfields, there
were, mingled with the relics, coins of Claudius, Vespasian, Commodus, and
Antoninus, with lachrymatories, lamps, bottles of liquor, &c.

As an old sexton, I have a right to give my advice; and the public have a
right to reject it. If I were the owner of a lot, in some well-governed
cemetery, I would place around it a neat, substantial, iron fence, and
paint it black. In the centre I would have a simple monument, of white
marble, and of liberal dimensions; not pyramidal, but with four
rectangular faces, to receive a goodly number of memoranda, not one of
which should exceed a single line. I would have no other monument, slab,
or tablet, to indicate particular graves. I would have a plan of this lot,
and preserve it, as carefully, as I preserved my title papers. Probably I
should keep a duplicate, in some safe place. When a body came to be
buried, in that lot, I would indicate the precise location, on my plan,
and engrave the name and the date of birth, and death, and nothing more,
upon the monument. If the dryness and elevation of the soil allowed, I
would dig the graves so deep, that the remains of three persons could
repose in one grave, the uppermost, five or six feet below the surface.
After the burial of the first, the grave would be filled up, and an even,
sodded surface presented, as before, until re-opened. Thus, of course,
those, who had been lovely and pleasant, in their lives, like Jonathan and
Saul, would, in death, be not divided. This, so far from being
objectionable, is a delightful idea, embalmed in the classical precedents
of antiquity. It is a well-known fact, that urns of a very large size
were, occasionally, in use, in Greece and Rome, for the reception and
commingling of the ashes of whole families. The ashes of Achilles were
mingled with those of his friend, Patroclus. The ashes of Domitian, the
last, and almost the worst, of the twelve Caesars, were inurned, as
Suetonius reports, ch. 17, with those of Julia.

With the Chinese, it is very common to bury a comb, a pair of scissors to
pare the nails, and four little purses, containing the nail parings of the
defunct. Jewels and coins of gold are sometimes inserted in the mouths of
the wealthy. This resembles the practice of the Greeks and Romans, of
placing an obolus, Charon's fee, in the mouth of the deceased. This
arrangement, in regard to the nail parings, seems well enough, as they are
clearly part and parcel, of the defunct. Rings, coins, and costly chalices
have been found, with the ashes of the dead.

Avarice, curiosity, and revenge, personal or political, have prompted
mankind, in every age, to desecrate the receptacles of the dead. The
latter motive has operated more fiercely, upon the people of France, than
upon almost any other. No nation has ever surpassed them, in that intense
ardor, nor in the parade and magnificence, with which they _canonize_--no
people upon earth can rival the bitterness and fury, with which they
_curse_. Lamartine, in his history of the Girondists, states, that
"dragoons of the Republic spread themselves over the public places,
brandishing their swords, and singing national airs. Thence they went to
the church of Val de Grace, where, enclosed in silver urns, were the
hearts of several kings and queens of France. These funeral vases they
broke, trampling under foot those relics of royalty, and then flung them
into the common sewer." And how shall _we_ deal with the dead?

With a reasonable economy of space, a lot of the common area, at Mount
Auburn, or Forest Hills, will suffice, for the occasion of a family of
ordinary size, for several generations. In re-opening one of these graves,
for a second or third interment, the operative should never approach
nearer than one foot to the coffin beneath. The careless manner, in which
bones are sometimes spaded up, by grave-diggers, results from their want
of precise knowledge of previous inhumations. Common sense indicates the
propriety of keeping a regular, topographical account of every interment.

But it is quite time to bring these lucubrations to a close. To some they
may have proved interesting, and, doubtless, wearisome to others. The
account is therefore balanced. Most heartily do I wish for every one of my
readers a decent funeral, and a peaceful grave. I have tolled my last
knell, turned down my last sod, and am no longer a Sexton of the Old
School.




No. XXII.


Some commendatory passages, in your own and other journals, my dear Mr.
Transcript, seem very much to me like a theatrical _encore_--they half
persuade me to reappear. There are other considerations, which I cannot
resist. Twenty devils, saith the Spanish proverb, employ that man, who
employeth not himself. I am quite sensible of my error, in quitting an old
vocation prematurely. You have no conception of the severe depression of
spirits, produced in the mind of an old sexton, who, in an evil hour, has
cast his spade aside, and set up for a man of leisure. It may answer for a
short time--a very short time. I can honestly declare, that I have led a
wearisome life, since I gave up undertaking. Many have been the expedients
I have adopted, to relieve the oppressive tedium of my miserable days. The
funeral bell has aroused me, as the trumpet rouses an old war horse. How
many processions I have followed, as an amateur! One or two young men of
the craft have been exceedingly kind to me, and have given me notice,
whenever they have been employed upon a new grave, and have permitted me
to amuse myself, by performing a portion of the work.

My own condition, since I left off business, and tried the terrible
experiment of living on my income, and doing nothing, has frequently and
forcibly reminded me of a similar passage, in the history of my excellent
old friend, Simon Allwick, the tallow-chandler, with whom I had the
happiness of living, in the closest intimacy, and whom I had the pleasure
of burying, about twenty years ago.

Mr. Allwick was a thrifty man; and, having acquired a handsome property,
his ambitious partner persuaded him to abandon his greasy occupation, and
set up for a gentleman. This was by no means, the work of a day. Mr.
Allwick loved his wife--she was an affectionate creature; and, next to the
small matter of having her own way in everything, she certainly loved
Allwick, as her prime minister, in bringing that matter about. She was
what is commonly called a devoted wife. Man is, marvellously, the creature
of habit. So completely had Allwick become that creature, that, when his
partner, upon the occasion of an excursion, as far as Jamaica Pond, for
which Allwick literally tore himself away from the chandlery, could not
restrain her admiration of that pretty, pet lake, he candidly confessed,
that he felt nothing of the sort. And, when Mrs. Allwick exclaimed, with
uplifted hands and tears in her eyes, that, in a cottage, on the borders
of such a lake, she should be the happiest of the happy--"So should I, my
dear," said her husband, with a sigh, so heavily drawn, that it seemed
four to the pound--"so should I, my dear, if the lake were a vat of clear
melted tallow, and I had a plenty of sticks and wicks."

Suffice it to say, Mrs. Allwick had set her heart upon the measure. She
had a confidential friend or two, to whom she had communicated the
_projet_: her pride had therefore become enlisted; for she had given them
to understand, that she meant to have her own way. She commenced an
uncompromising crusade, against grease, in every form. She complained,
that grease spots were upon everything. She engaged the services of a
young physician, who gave it, as his deliberate opinion, that Mr.
Allwick's headaches arose from the deleterious influence of the fumes of
hot grease, acting through the olfactory nerves, upon the pineal gland.

He even expressed a fear, that insanity might supervene, and he furnished
an account of an eminent tallow-chandler in London, who went raving mad,
and leaping into his own vat of boiling grease, was drawn out, no better
than a great candle. It was a perfect _coup de grace_, when Mrs. Allwick
drove candles from her dwelling, and substituted oil. The chandlery
adjoined their residence, in Scrap Court; and it must be admitted, that,
with the wind at south, the odor was not particularly savory. Mrs. Allwick
was what the world would style a smart woman, and she was in the habit of
calling her husband a very _wicked_ man and their mansion the most
unclassical villa, though in the very midst of _grease_!

It is quite superfluous to say, the point was finally carried--the
chandlery was sold--a country house was purchased, not on the lake, but in
a sweet spot. There was some little embarrassment about the name, but two
wild gooseberry bushes having been discovered, within half a mile, it was
resolved, in council, to call it Mount Gooseberry. Since the going forth
of Adam from Eden, in misery and shame, never was there such an exodus, as
that of poor Allwick from the chandlery. I have not time to describe it. I
am glad I have not. It was too much. Even Mrs. Allwick began to doubt the
perfect wisdom of her plan. But the die was cast. On they went to their
El Dorado. It was a pleasant spot. It was "a bonnie day in June." The
birds were in ecstacies--so was Mrs. Allwick--so were the children--the
sun shone--the stream ran beautifully by--the leaves still glistened in
the morning dew--there was a sprinkling of lambs on the hills--old Cato
was at the door, to welcome them, and Carlo most affectionately covered
the white frocks of the children with mud. "Was there ever anything like
this?" exclaimed the delighted wife. "Isn't it a perfect pink, papa?"
cried the children. In answer to all this, the _jecur ulcerosum_ of poor
Allwick sent forth a deep groan, that shook the very walls of his
tabernacle.

The mind of man is a mill, and will grind chaff if nothing more
substantial be supplied; and, peradventure, the upper will grind the
nether millstone to destruction. For a brief space, Mr. Allwick found
employment. Fences were to be completed--trees and bushes were to be set
out--the furniture was to be arranged--but all this was soon over, and
there was my good old friend, Simon Allwick, the busiest man alive, with
nothing to do! Never was there a heart, in the bosom of a tallow-chandler,
so perfectly "untravelled." Poor fellow, he went "up stairs and down
stairs, and in my lady's chamber," but all to no other purpose, than to
confirm him, in a sentiment of profound respect, for that homely proverb,
_it is hard for an old dog to learn new tricks_.

"Where is your father?" said Mrs. Allwick to the children, after
breakfast, one awful hot morning, near the end of June. The children went
in pursuit--there he was--he had sought to occupy his thoughts, by
watching the gambols of some half a dozen Byfield cokies--there he was--he
had rested his arms upon the rail of the fence, and had been looking into
the sty--his chin had dropped upon his hands--he had fallen asleep! He was
mortified and nettled, at being found thus, and continued in a moody
condition, through the day. On the following morning, he went to the city,
and remained till night. His spirits were greatly improved, on his return;
and to some felicitations from his wife and family, he replied--"My dear,
I feel better, certainly; and I have made an arrangement, which, I think,
will enable me to get along pretty comfortably--I have seen Mr. Smith, to
whom I sold the chandlery, and have extended the term of payment. He still
dips on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and has agreed to set a kettle
of fat and some sticks for me, in the little closet, near the back door,
that I may slip in, and amuse myself, on dipping days."

I ought to have been warned, by this example; but I had quite forgotten
it. It is very agreeable to be thus welcomed back to the performance of my
former duties. No one, but he, who is deprived of some long-cherished
occupation, can truly comprehend the pleasure of occasionally handling a
corpse.




No. XXIII.


Few things can be imagined, more thoroughly revolting and absurd, than the
vengeance of the living, rioting among the ashes of the dead--rudely
rolling the stone away from the door of the sepulchre--entering the narrow
houses of the unresisting, _vi et armis_, with the pickaxe and the
crowbar--and scattering to the winds the poor senseless remains of those,
who were consigned to their resting-places, with all the honors of a
former age. This, were it not awful, would be eminently ridiculous. For
the execution of such posthumous revenge the French nation has the
precedence of every other, civilized and savage. Frenchmen, if not,
through all time, from the days of Pharamond to the present, remarkably
zealous of good works, are clearly a peculiar people.

The history of the world furnishes no parallel to that preposterous
crusade, carried on by that people, in 1794, against the dead bodies of
kings and princes, saints and martyrs. This war, upon dead men's bones,
was not projected and executed, by the rabble, on the impulse of the
moment. A formal, deliberate decree of the Convention commanded, that the
tombs should be destroyed, and they were destroyed, and their contents
scattered to the winds, accordingly. Talk not of all that is furious and
fantastical, in the conduct of monkeys and maniacs--a nation of
chimpanzees would have acted with more dignity and discretion. A colony of
grinning baboons, as Shakspeare calls them, bent upon liberty, equality,
and fraternity, might have dethroned some tyrannical ourang outang, who
had carried matters with too high a hand, and extorted too many cocoa
nuts, for the support of his civil list; but, after having cut off his
head, it is not to be believed, that they would have gone about,
scratching up the ashes of his ancestors, and wreaking their vengeance
upon those unoffending relics.

This miserable onslaught upon the dead began, immediately after December
20, 1794. The new worship commenced on that day, and the goddess of reason
then, for the first time, presented herself to the people, in the person
of the celebrated actress, Mademoiselle Maillard. St. Genevieve, the
patroness of the city of Paris, died in 512, and her remains were
subsequently transferred to the church, which bears her name, and which
was erected, by Clovis, in 517. The executive agents of the National
Convention commenced their legalized fooleries, upon the ashes of this
poor old saint. These French gentlemen--the politest nation upon
earth--without the slightest regard for decency, or sanctification, or
common sense, dug up Madame Genevieve's coffin, and, to aggravate the
indignity, dragged the old lady's remains to the place of public
execution, the _Place de Greve_; and, having burnt them there, scattered
the ashes to the winds. The gates of bronze, presented by Charlemagne to
the church of St. Denis, were broken to pieces. Pepin, the sire of
Charlemagne and son of Charles Martel, was buried there, in 768. Nothing
remained of Pepin but a handful of dust, which was served in a similar
manner. It is stated by Lamartine, that the heads of Marshal Turenne,
Duguesclin, Louis XII., and Francis I., were rolled about the pavement;
sceptres, crowns, and crosiers were trampled under foot; and the shouts of
the operatives were heard, when the blows of the axe broke through some
regal coffin, and the royal bones were thrown out, to be treated with
senseless insult.

Hugh Capet, Philip the bold, and Philip, the handsome, were buried beneath
the choir. The ruthless hands of these modern vandals tore from the
corpses those garments of the grave, in which they had reposed for
centuries, and threw the relics upon beds of quicklime.

Henry IV. fell by the hands of Ravaillac, the assassin, May 14, 1610. His
body, was carefully embalmed, by Italians. When taken from the coffin, the
lineaments of the face fully corresponded with the numerous
representations, transmitted by the hands of painters and statuaries. That
cherished and perfumed beard expanded, as if it had just then received the
last manipulation of the friseur. The marks were perfectly visible, upon
the breast, indicating the first and second thrust of Ravaillac's
stilletto. The popularity of this monarch protected his remains, though
for a brief space. He was frank, brave, and humane. For two days, all that
remained of this idol of the people--was exhibited to public view.

The exhumed king was placed at the foot of the altar, and a countless
multitude passed, in mute procession, around these favored relics. This
gave umbrage to Javogues, a member of the Convention. He denounced this
partiality, and railed against the memory of Henri le Grand. The
multitude, impressible by the slightest impulse, hurled the dead monarch
into the common fosse of quicklime and corruption; execrating, under the
influence of a few feverish words, from the lips of a republican savage,
the memory and the remains of one, cherished by their predecessors, for
nearly three hundred years. A similar fate awaited his son and grandson,
Louis XIII. and XIV. The vault of the Bourbons was thoroughly ransacked,
in the same spirit of desolation. Queens, dauphinesses, and princesses,
says the historian of the Girondists, were carried away, in armsful, by
the laborers, to be cast into the trench, and consumed by quicklime. In
the vault of Charles V., surnamed the wise, besides the corpse were found,
a hand of justice and a golden crown. In the coffin of his wife, Jeanne of
Bourbon, were her spindles and marriage rings. These relics were thrown
into the ditch--the corpses--not the articles of gold, however debased by
their juxtaposition. Of the French gentlemen it may be affirmed, as of
Madame Gilpin--

  "Though on pleasure she was bent,
  She had a frugal mind."

An economy, perfectly grotesque, mingled with an unmanly desecration. Even
the lead was scraped together from these coffins, and converted into
balls. In the vault of the Valois no bodies were discovered. The people
were very desirous of showing some tokens of their wrath, upon the poor
carcass of Louis XI., but it could not be found. Abbes, heroes, ministers
of state were indiscriminately cast into the fosse. Upon the exhumation of
Dagobert I., and his queen, Matilde, who had been buried twelve hundred
years, her skeleton was found without a head. Such is said to have been
the case with several other skeletons of the queens of France.

In one of the upper lofts of the cabinet of Natural History of the Jardin
des Plantes, among stuffed beasts and birds, surrounded by mixed and
manifold rubbish, and covered with dust, there lay a case or package,
unexamined and unnoticed, for nine long years. This envelope contained the
mortal remains of a Marechal of France, the hero of an hundred
battles,--of no other than Henry de la Tour, Viscount de Turenne. He was
killed by a cannon ball, July 27, 1675, at the age of 64. All France
lamented the death of this great man. The admiration of all Europe
followed him to the grave. Courage, modesty, generosity, science have
embalmed his memory. The king, Louis le Grand, ordered a solemn service to
be performed, for the Marechal de Turenne, in the Cathedral church at
Paris, as for the first prince of the blood, and that his remains should
be interred in the abbey of St. Denis, the burial-place of the royal
personages of France, where the cardinal, his nephew, raised a splendid
mausoleum to his memory. So much for glory--and what then? In 1794, the
remains of this great man were upon the point of being cast into the
common fosse, by the agents of the Convention, when some, less rabid than
the rest, smuggled them away; and, for security, conveyed them to the
lumber room of the cabinet of Natural History of the Jardin des Plantes.
Having reposed, nine years in state, peradventure between a dilapidated
kangaroo and a cast-off opossum--these remains of the great Turenne were,
at length, committed, in a quiet way, to the military tomb of the
Invalids.




No. XXIV.


Burning dead saints, is a more pardonable matter, than burning living
martyrs--the combustion of St. Genevieve's dry bones, than the fiery trial
of Latimer and Ridley--the fantastical decree of the French Convention,
than the cruel discipline of bloody Mary. Dark days were they, and full of
evil, those years of bitterness and blood, from 1553 to Nov. 17, 1558,
when, by a strange coincidence, this hybrid queen, whose sire was a
British tyrant, and whose dam a Spanish bigot, expired on the same day
with the Cardinal, Reginald Pole. From the remarkable proximity of the
events arose a suspicion of poison, of which the public mind has long
since been disabused.

In this age of greater intelligence and religious freedom, the outrages,
perpetrated, in the very city of London, within five brief years, are
credible, only on the strength of well authenticated history. According to
Bishop Burnet, two hundred and eighty-four persons were burnt at the
stake, during four years of this merciless and miserable reign. Lord
Burleigh makes the number of those, who died, in that reign, by
imprisonment, torments, famine, and fire, to be near four hundred. Weever,
in his Funeral Monuments, page 116, quotes the historian Speed, as saying,
"In the heat of those flames, were burnt to ashes five bishops,
one-and-twenty divines, eight gentlemen, eighty-four artificers, an
hundred husbandmen, servants, and laborers, twenty-six wives, twenty
widows, nine virgins, two boys, and two infants; one of them whipped to
death by Bonner, and the other, springing out of the mother's womb from
the stake, as she burned, thrown again into the fire." Here, in passing,
suffer me to express my deep reverence for John Weever. I know of no book,
so interesting to the craft, as his Funeral Monuments, a work of infinite
labor and research. Weever died in 1632, and lies in St. James,
Clerkenwell. His epitaph may be found in Strype's Survey:

  Lancashire gave me birth,
    And Cambridge education;
  Middlesex gave me death,
    And this church my humation;
  And Christ to me hath given
  A place with him in heaven.

The structure of these lines will remind the classical reader of Virgil's
epitaph:

  Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere; tenet nunc
  Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces.

The short and sharp reign of Mary Tudor was remarkable for burning
Protestant Christians and wax candles. That fountain of fun, pure and
undefiled, that prince of wags, Theodore Hook, was offered, very young,
for admission at the University; and, when the chancellor opened the book,
and gravely inquired if he was ready to sign the thirty-nine articles,
"Yes, sir," replied the young puppy, "forty, if you please." Now, in
contemplation of the enormous consumption of wax, especially upon the
occasion of funeral obsequies, during Mary's reign, it would seem that a
belief, in its vital importance, might have formed an additional article,
in the Romish creed.

I have never thought well of grafting religion upon the selfishness of
man's nature. Nominal converts, it is true, are readily made, in that way.
In Catholic countries, wax chandlers are Romanists, to a man. I always
considered the attempt, a few years since, to convert the inhabitants of
Nantucket to Puseyism, by a practical appeal to their self interest,
however ingeniously contrived, a very wicked thing. And I greatly lauded
the good old bishop of this diocese, for rebuking those very silly
priests, who promoted a senseless and extravagant consumption of one of
the great staples of that island, by burning candles in the day time. He
made good use of his mitre as an extinguisher.

On a somewhat similar principle, I have always objected to every attempt
to augment the revenues of a state by taxing corpses--not upon the
acknowledged principle, that taxation without representation is
inadmissible--but because the whole system is a most miserable mingling of
_sacra profanis_. I may not be understood by all, in this remark: I refer
to those acts of Parliament, which, for the purposes of levying a tax, or
promoting some particular branch of industry, have attempted to regulate a
man's apparel, and the fitting up of his narrow house, after he is dead.
The compulsory employment of flannel, by British statute, is an example of
this legislative interference.

Nothing is more common, in Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, than
entries, such as these: "1557, May 3. The Lord Shandois was buried with
heralds, an herse of wax, four banners of images, and other appendages of
funeral honor." "On the 5th, the Lady Chamberlain was buried with a fair
herse of wax." "May 28, in the forenoon, was buried Mrs. Gates, widow,
late wife, as it seems, to Sir John Gates, executed the first year of this
queen's reign. She gave seventeen fine black gowns, and fourteen of broad
russet for poor men. There were carried two white branches, ten staff
torches, and four great tapers." "July 10th the Lady Tresham was buried at
Peterborough, with four banners, and an herse of wax, and torches." "1558,
September 14th, was buried Sir Andrew Judd, skinner, merchant of Muscovy,
and late Mayor of London, with ten dozen of escutcheons, garnished with
angels, and an herse of wax." What is an herse of wax? This will be quite
unintelligible to those, who have supposed that word to import nothing
else than the vehicle, in which the dead are carried to the grave. Herse
also signifies a temporary monument, erected upon, or near, the place of
sepulture, and on which the corpse was laid, for a time, in state; and a
herse of wax was a structure of this kind, surrounded with wax tapers.
This will be made manifest, by some additional extracts from the same
author: "1557. The 16th day of July, died the lady Anne, of Cleves, at
Chelsey, sometime wife and queen unto King Henry VIII., but never crowned.
Her corpse was cered the night following." "On the 29th began the herse at
Westminster, for the Lady Anne of Cleves, consisting of carpenters' work
of seven principals, being as goodly an herse as had been seen." "On the
3d of August the body of the Lady Anne of Cleves was brought from Chelsey,
where her house was, unto Westminster, to be buried--men bore her, under a
canopy of black velvet, with four black staves, and so brought her into
the herse, and there tarried _Dirge_, remaining there all night, with
lights burning." "On the 16th day of August the herse of the King of
Denmark was begun to be set up, in a four-square house. August 18, was the
King of Denmark's herse in St. Paul's finished with wax, the like to which
was never seen in England, in regard to the fashion of square tapers." And
on the 23d, also was the King of Denmark's herse, at St. Paul's, "taken
down by the wax chandlers and carpenters, to whom this work pertained, by
order of Mr. Garter, and certain of the Lord Treasurer's servants." These
herses were, doubtless, very attractive in their way. "Aug. 31, 1557. The
young Dutchess of Norfolk being lately deceased, her herse began to be set
up on the 28th, in St. Clements, without Temple bar, and was this day
finished with banners, pensils, wax, and escutcheons."

The office of an undertaker, in those days, was no sinecure. He was an
_arbiter elegantiarum_. A funeral was a festival then. Eat, drink, and be
merry, for tomorrow you die, was the common phylactery.

             "The funeral baked meats
  Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables."

Baked meats shall be the subject of my next.




No. XXV.


Pliny, xviii. 30, refers to a practice among the Romans, very similar to
that, in use among certain unenlightened nations, of depositing articles
of diet upon tombs and graves, such as beans, lettuces, eggs, bread, and
the like, for the use of ghosts. The stomachs of Roman ghosts were not
supposed to be strong enough for flesh meat. Hence the lines of Juvenal,
v. 85:

  Sed tibi dimidio constrictus cammarus ovo
  Ponitur, exigua feralis caena patella.

The _silicernium_ or _caena funebris_ was a very different, and more solid
affair. At first blush--to use a common and sensible expression--there
seems no respectable keeping, between the art of burying the dead, and
that of feasting the living. Depositing those, whom we love, in their
graves, is certainly the very last relish for an appetite. Something of
this was undoubtedly done, of old, under the promptings of Epicurean
philosophy--upon the _dum vivimus vivamus_ principle--and, in that spirit
which teaches the soldier, when he turns from the grave, to change the
mournful, for the merry strain. The desire of equalling or excelling
others, in the magnificence of funereal parade, has ever been a powerful
motive. The eyes of others destroy us, said Franklin, and not our own.
Grief for the departed, and sympathy with the bereaved, were not deemed
sufficient, to insure an imposing parade. Games and festivals were
therefore provided, for the people. Among other attractions, masses of
uncooked meat were bestowed upon all comers. This was the _visceratio_ of
the Romans. This word seems to have a different import; _viscera_,
however, signifies all beneath the skin, as may be seen by consulting
Serv. in Virg., AEn. i., 211. Suetonius Caes. 39, and Cicero de Officiis ii.
16, refer to this practice. It was by no means very common, but frequently
adopted by those, who could afford the expense, and were desirous of the
display.

Marcus Flavius had committed an infamous crime. He was popular, and the
aediles of the people had fixed a day for his absolution. Under pretence of
celebrating his mother's funeral, he gave a _visceratio_ to the people:
Populo visceratio data, a M. Flavio, in funere matris. Erant, qui, per
speciem honorandae parentis, meritam mercedem populo solutam
interpretarentur; quod eum, die dicta ab aedilibus, crimine stupratae
matris familae absolvisset. Liv. viii. 22. A note upon this passage, in
Lemaire's edition, fully explains the nature of this practice.

This was a very different affair from the _silicernium_, or feast for the
friends, after the funeral. Upon such occasions, the Falernian flowed, and
boars were roasted whole. The reader, by opening his Livy, xxxix. 46, will
find an account of the funeral of P. Licinius: a _visceratio_ was given to
the people; one hundred and twenty gladiators fought in the arena; the
funeral games lasted three days; and then followed a splendid
entertainment. On that occasion, a tempest drove the company into the
forum; this occurred, in the year U. C. 569. Through all time, the
practice has prevailed, more or less, of providing entertainments, for
those, who gather on such occasions. In villages, especially, and within
my own recollection, the funeral has been delayed, to enable distant
friends to arrive in season; and the interval has been employed, in the
preparation of creature comforts, not only for such as attended, and
observed the ceremonial of an hour, but for such, as came to the bereaved,
like the comforters of the man of Uz, "every one from his place, and sat
down with him, seven days and seven nights." Animal provision must surely
be required, to sustain such protracted lamentation.

In the age, when Shakspeare wrote, and for several ages before and after,
"baked meats," at funerals, were very common. So far, from contenting
themselves with the preparation of some simple aliment, for such as were
an hungered, the appetites of all were solicited, by a parade of the
rarest liquors and the choicest viands. Tables were spread, in the most
ample manner, and the transition was immediate from the tomb to the festal
board. The _requiescat in pace_ was scarcely uttered, before the blessing
was craved, on the baked meats. It matters little, from what period of
history we select our illustrations of this truth. Suppose we take our
examples from the reign, preceding that, in which Shakspeare was born;
comprehend some other incidents in our collection; and rely, for our
authority, on good old John Strype, who was himself born in 1643. There is
no higher authority. I will present a few specimens from his
Ecclesiastical Memorials: "1557, May 5. Was the Lady Chamberlain buried.
At the mass preached Dr. Chadsey. A great dole of money given at the
church, and after, a great dinner. May 29, was buried Mrs. Gates; after
mass a great dinner. June 7, began a stage play at the Grey Friars of the
passion of Christ. June 10.--This day Sir John, a chantry priest, hung
himself with his own girdle. The same day was the storehouse in Portsmouth
burnt, much beer and victual destroyed. A judgment, perhaps, for burning
so many innocent persons. June 29.--This same day was the second year's
mind (i. e. yearly _obit_) of good master Lewyn, ironmonger; at his dirge
were all the livery. After, they retired to the widow's place, where they
had a cake and wine; and besides the parish, all comers treated." Aug.
3.--After giving a long account of the funeral of Ann of Cleves, Strype
adds, "and so they went in order to dinner." After reciting the
particulars of the King of Denmark's funeral, in London, Aug. 18, 1557, he
adds: "After the dirge, all the heralds and all the Lords went into the
Bishop of London's place, and drank. The next day was the morrow-mass, and
a goodly sermon preached, and after, to my Lord of London's to dinner."

The account of the funeral of Thomas Halley is entitled to be presented
entire: "On the 24th of this month, August, Mr. Thomas Halley,
clarentieux, king-at-arms, was buried, in St. Giles's parish, without
Cripplegate, with coat, armor, and pennon of arms, and scutcheons of his
arms, and two white branches, twelve staff torches, and four great tapers,
and a crown. And, after dirge, the heralds repaired unto Greenhill, the
waxchandler, a man of note (being waxchandler to Cardinal Pole) living
hard by; where they had spice-bread and cheese, and wine, great plenty.
The morrow-mass was also celebrated, and sermon preached; and after
followed a great dinner, whereat were all the heralds, together with the
parishioners. There was a supper also, as well as a dinner." After a long
account of the funeral of the Countess of Arundel, Oct. 5, 1557, follow
the customary words--"and, after, all departed to my Lord's place to
dinner." "Nov. 12, Mr. Maynard, merchant, was buried; and after, the
company departed to his house, at Poplar, to a great dinner." "Oct. 19,
died the Lord Bray; and so he went by water to Chelsea to be buried, &c.
&c. Many priests and clerks attended. They all came back to this Lord's
place, at Blackfriars, to dinner." At the funeral of Richard Capet, Feb.
1, "All return to dinner." "On the 16th, Mr. Pynohe, fishmonger, and a
brother of Jesus, was buried. All being performed at the church, the
company retired to his house to drink." On the 24th, "a great dinner,"
after the funeral of Sir George Bowers. This testimony is inexhaustible.
After the funeral of Lady White, March 2, Strype says "there was as great
a dinner as had been seen." I will close with two examples. "Aug. 3, 1588.
The Lady Rowlet was buried; and after mass, the company retreated to the
place to dinner, which was plentifully furnished with venison, fresh
salmon, fresh sturgeon, and many other fine dishes. On the 12th, died Mr.
Machyl, alderman and clothesworker." After a sermon by a grey friar, "the
Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and all the mourners and ladies went to dinner,
which was very splendid, lacking no good meat, both flesh and fish, and an
hundred marchpanes."

It is certain, that all this appears to us now to have been in very bad
taste; and it is not easy to comprehend the principle, which conducted to
the perpetration of such sensual absurdities; unless we suppose it to have
been the design of all concerned, to felicitate the heir, upon his coming
to possession; the widow, upon the fruition of an ample dower and abundant
leisure; or the widower, upon the recovery of his liberty. This is not the
only occasion, upon which man's features are required, from the extreme
suddenness of the change, to undergo a process of moral distortion,
amounting to grimace. Thus, grief, for the death of one monarch, is rudely
expressed, by turbulent joy at the succession of another. Suffer me to
conclude, in the words of father Strype--"The same day queen Mary
deceased, in the morning between 11 and 12, the Lady Elizabeth was
proclaimed queen: in the afternoon all the churches in London rang their
bells; and at night were bonfires made, and tables set in the streets, and
the people did eat, and drink, and make merry."




No. XXVI.


Among the dead--the mighty dead--there is one, in regard to whom, our
national dealings may be fairly set forth, in the words of Desdemona--

  In faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
  'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
  She wish'd she had not heard it.

Forty-nine years have passed, since the interment of George Washington.
Forty-nine years ago, "the joint committee," says Chief Justice Marshall,
"which had been appointed to devise the mode, by which the nation should
express its feelings, on this melancholy occasion, reported" a series of
resolutions, among which was the following: "That a marble monument be
erected, by the United States, at the city of Washington, and that the
family of General Washington be requested to permit his body to be
deposited under it; and that the monument be so designed, as to
commemorate the great events of his military and political life." To the
letter, transmitting the resolutions to Mrs. Washington, she replied, as
follows: "Taught by the great example, which I have so long had before me,
never to oppose my private wishes to the public will, I must consent to
the request made by Congress, which you have had the goodness to transmit
to me; and, in doing this, I need not, I cannot, say what a sacrifice of
individual feeling I make, to a sense of public duty."

All this is very fine. The nation requested permission to remove the
remains--Mrs. Washington consented--but that monument! The remains have
slumbered quietly, where they first were interred, for nine and forty
years--and the monument is like Rachel's first born--it is not! There is
something better in prospect. Such, however, is the record thus far. It is
very true he needs no monument. No immortal can say more justly, from his
elevated sphere, to every inhabitant of this vast empire, _si monumentum
quaeris, circumspice_!

This fact, however, so far from taking the tithe of a hair from the
balance of this account, illustrates the national delinquency. It may be
matter of amusing speculation, to contrast the zeal, which prevails,
especially in England, in relation to the most trifling memorials of
Shakspeare, and the popular indifference, in regard to certain relics,
known to have been the property of Washington, and to have been personally
used by him.

All are familiar with the recent excitement, on the subject of
Shakspeare's house--that mulberry tree--a hair of him, for memory.

Washington's library has lately been sold, for just about the price of
four shares in one of the cotton mills at Lowell. A few years since, the
cabinet of medals, struck at different times, in honor of the Father of
his country, and which had become the property of one of his
representatives, was sold by him, for five hundred dollars, and purchased
by an individual citizen of Massachusetts. There are some things,
seemingly so vast--so very--very national--that one can scarcely believe
it possible for any private cabinet to contain them gracefully.

Soon after the destruction of the Bastile, July 14, 1789, La Fayette sent
its massive key to Washington--his political father--as the first fruits
of those principles of liberty, which were then supposed to be bourgeoning
forth, in a _free_ French soil. This colossal key was suspended, in the
front entry, at Mount Vernon. A short time ago, an aged friend, residing
in a neighboring town, and once intimate in the family of Washington, told
me he had often seen that famous key, in its well known position. This
also became the property of Washington's representatives. A few years
since, I saw it stated, in the public journals, that, among other effects,
this key of the Bastile was sold at auction, and purchased for
seventy-five cents, by a gentleman, who had the good taste to return it to
some member of the family.

Eminent men, as they arise, are occasionally compared to Washington.
Points of resemblance, now and then, may assuredly be found; but there
never breathed a man, whose mental and moral properties combined, could
endure a rigid comparison with his. Whoever attempts to run this parallel,
between him and any other, will readily acknowledge the truth of the
proverb, _nullum simile quatuor pedibus currit_. Select the example from
the present, or the past, from our own or from other lands, and inquire,
to which of them all would Erskine, so chary of his praise, so slow of
faith in his fellow, have applied those memorable words, inscribed, in the
presentation copy of his work, transmitted to Washington--_You, sir, are
the only individual, for whom I ever felt an awful reverence_. Of whom
else would Lord Brougham have pronounced this remarkable passage--"It will
be the duty of the historian and the sage, in all ages, to omit no
occasion of commemorating this illustrious man; and, until time shall be
no more, will a test of the progress, which our race has made in wisdom
and virtue, be derived, from the veneration paid to the immortal name of
Washington."

I have not yet met with any gentleman of our calling, who is not decidedly
in favor of the election of General Taylor, or who would not gratuitously
attend, in a professional way, upon Messieurs Cass and Van Buren. We
perceive a resemblance between the first president and the present
candidate, in their willingness to draw long bills on posterity for fame,
in preference to numerous drafts, at sight, without grace, for daily
applause. But we behold, in Washington, the image and superscription, not
of Caesar, but of a peerless mortal--of one, created, verily, a little
lower than the angels--

  "A combination, and a form, indeed,
  Where every god did seem to set his seal,
  To give the world assurance of a man."

No men have done more to bedim the reputation of Washington, than
Jefferson and Randolph. Verily they have their reward. In no portion of
our country has the memory of that great man been more universally
cherished and beloved, than in New England. A sentiment, not only of
reverence for his character, but of affection for his person, was very
general, in this quarter; and manifested itself, in a remarkable manner,
upon the occasion of his death. Nothing could have been more unexpected,
than the announcement of that event, in Boston. I will close this article,
with a simple illustration of the popular feeling, when the sad tidings
arrived. At the close of that year, 1799--I was a small boy then--I was
returning from a ride on horseback, to Dorchester Point--there was no
bridge, and it was quite a journey. As I approached the town, I was very
much surprised, at the tolling of the bells. Upon reaching home, I saw my
old father, at an unusual hour for him, the busiest man alive, to be at
home, sitting alone in our parlor, with his bandanna before his eyes. I
ran towards him, with the thoughtless gayety of youth, and asked what the
bells were tolling for. He withdrew the handkerchief from his face--the
tears were rolling down his fine old features--"Go away child," said he,
"don't disturb me; do you not know, that Washington is dead?"

The reader has surmised, that the worthy old man had sipped at the
fountain of executive patronage. Not at all. He had never seen Washington,
and never held an office civil or military, saving under Hancock's
commission, as justice of the peace, which was accounted a very pretty
compliment, in those days. No. He was nothing but an American, and he shed
those American tears, upon the death of one, whose character and conduct
had filled his heart with sentiments of pride, and love, and "awful
reverence."




No. XXVII.


I am rather inclined to suspect, that man is a selfish animal. A few days
ago, I administered a merited rebuke to a group of young sextons, who had
gathered together, after a funeral, and were seated upon a barrow bier,
before an unclosed tomb. They had been discussing the subject of capital
punishment, and were opposed to it unanimously. They frankly admitted,
that they were not influenced, by any consideration of humanity, but
looked simply to the fact, that, as the bodies of executed criminals went,
commonly, to the surgeons, every execution deprived us of a job. One
observed, that Boston was dreadfully healthy--another remarked, that
homoeopathy had proved a considerable help to us. Several compliments were
paid to Thompson, Brandreth, and Mrs. Kidder. But they appeared to
anticipate emolument from no source, so certainly, as from the approaching
cholera.

I was greatly shocked, and expressed my opinion very freely. I reminded
them of the primitive dignity of the sacristan's office. I should deeply
regret, to see our calling reduced to the level of a mere trade, with its
tariff--shrouds all rising--coffins looking up! We have a fair share of
funerals, and the members of our profession have no just cause for
complaint. Steam has helped us prodigiously. It has been said, that,
comparing the amount of steam travel with the amount of ante-steam travel,
i. e., the present with the past, the relative amount of deaths, from
accident, is about the same. Suppose it to be so; the cheapness and
facility of locomotion, at present, stimulate a much larger number to
move--there is a vast increase of frivolous and pleasure travel--cars are
filled with women, crates with bandboxes, and death is to be averaged over
the integer--I therefore repeat, that steam has helped our profession. If
steam had been known, in ancient Rome, it would have been reckoned a
deity, whose diet, like the sacrifice of Juggernaut, would have been flesh
and blood.

There is a very natural sensibility, on the part of steamboat and railroad
proprietors, to the announcement of disasters, by steam. There is a
wonderful eagerness to persuade the public to contemplate these
catastrophes, with the larger end of the telescope toward the eye. This
also is a great help to our profession. There is really no lack of
business, and it is quite abominable, for thoughtless young sextons to
pray for the advent of the cholera.

We dwell in a region of the earth, seldom touched by this besom of
destruction. Pestilence and famine have rarely come nigh unto us. It would
be impious to envy the denizens of milder climes.

  "With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow,
    If bleak and barren Scotia's hills arise;
  There plague and poison, lust and rapine grow,
    Here peaceful are the vales and pure the skies."

I thank heaven, I was not an undertaker, in London, in 1665, when there
were scarcely enough of the living to bury the dead. When I used to wrap
myself up, in the pages of Robinson Crusoe, how little I suspected, that
Daniel Defoe was the writer of some twenty volumes beside. His inimitable
history of the plague, of 1665, is admirable reading, for the members of
our craft.

At irregular periods, plague, yellow fever, sweating sickness, and cholera
have visited the earth, with terrible effect. Let us take a cursory view
of these awful visitations. A. D. 78, 10,000 perished daily at Rome. The
plague returned there A. D. 167. Terrible plague in Britain A. D. 430. A
dreadful plague spread over Europe, Asia and Africa, A. D. 558, and
continued, for several years. 200,000 died of the plague in
Constantinople, A. D. 746. This plague raged for three years, and extended
to Calabria, Sicily and Greece. William of Malmsbury states, that A. D.
772, an epidemic disease carried off 34,000 in Chichester, England. 40,000
died of pestilence in Scotland, A. D. 954. Hollingshed gives an account of
a terrible plague among cattle, A. D. 1111, and in Ireland A. D. 1204. In
this year a general plague raged in Europe. In London 200 persons were
buried daily, in the Charterhouse yard. A dreadful mortality prevailed in
London and Paris, A. D. 1362 and '7. Great pestilence in Ireland A. D.
1383. Endemic destroyed 30,000 in London A. D. 1407. Great numbers died of
plague in Ireland, following famine, A. D. 1466. Dublin was severely
visited with plague A. D. 1470. Rapin and Salmon give an account of the
plague at Oxford, A. D. 1471, and throughout England A. D. 1478.

The sweating sickness, _sudor Anglicus_, first appeared, in England, in
1483, in the army of Henry VII., on his landing at Milfordhaven. A year
or two after, it travelled to London, and remained there, with
intermissions, for forty years. It then passed over to the continent, and
overran Holland, Germany, Flanders, France, Denmark, and Norway. It
continued in those countries, from 1525 to 1530; it then returned to
England; and was last known there, in 1551. It was a malignant fever,
accompanied with very great thirst, delirium, and excessive sweat. Dr.
Caius called it "a contagious, pestilential fever of one day, prevailing
with a mighty slaughter, as tremendous as the plague of Athens." Dr.
Willis says, "Its malignity was so extreme, that as soon as it entered a
city, it made a daily attack, on five or six hundred persons, of whom
scarcely one in a hundred recovered." Strype says, "The plague of sweat
this summer, 1551, was very severe, and carried away multitudes of people,
rich and poor, especially in London, where, in one day, July 10th, died an
hundred people, and the next, one hundred and twenty. From the 8th of this
month to the 19th, there died in London, of this sweat, 872."

Stowe says that, in the 9th year of Henry VII., 1517, half the population,
in the capital towns of England, died of the sweating sickness: and that
it proved fatal, in three hours. In the year 1500, Stowe also says, that
the plague was so terrible in London, that Henry VII. and his court went
over to Calais. The plague prevailed in England and Ireland, in 1603, and
in London 30,000 persons died. In 1611, 200,000 died of pestilence, in
Constantinople; 35,000 persons died of an epidemic in London, in 1625. In
1632 a general mortality prevailed in France; 60,000 died in Lyons. The
plague was brought from Sardinia to Naples, in 1656, and 400,000 of the
Neapolitans died, in six months. In the great plague of London, of 1665,
described by De Foe, 68,596 persons died. In 1720, 60,000 perished of the
plague at Marseilles.

An account is given, by the Abbe Mariti, of one of the most awful plagues
ever known, which prevailed in Syria, in 1760. In Persia, 80,000
inhabitants of Bassorah, died of the plague, in 1773. In 1792, the plague
destroyed 800,000 persons in Egypt. In 1799, 247,000 died of the plague at
Fez; and in Barbary, 3000 daily, for several days. In 1804 and '5, an
immense number were destroyed, by the plague, in Gibraltar. At the same
place, in 1828, many were swept away, by an epidemic fever, scarce
distinguishable from the plague. Verily the vocation of an undertaker is
anything but a sinecure! But, in such terrible emergencies, as were hourly
occurring, during the prevalence of the great plague of London, such an
operator as Pontraci would have cast aside all thoughts of shrouds and
coffins. In one single night 4000 died. The hearses were common dead
carts; and the continued cry, _bring out your dead_, rang through every
heart. Defoe rates the victims of the plague of 1665, at 100,000.

At present, we have a deeper interest in the pestilence of modern times,
though by some accounted of great antiquity. The Indian or Asiatic cholera
traversed the north, east and south of Europe, and the countries of Asia,
and, in two years, prostrated 900,000 victims. It subsequently appeared in
England, at Sunderland, Oct. 26, 1831; in Scotland, at Edinburgh, Feb. 6,
1832; in Ireland, at Dublin, March 3, 1832. The mortality was great, but
much less than upon the continent. Between March and August, 1832, 18,000
died of cholera, in Paris. In July and August, 1837, it reappeared in
Rome, the Two Sicilies, Genoa, Berlin, and some other cities. Its ravages,
in this country, were far less notable, than in many others. It is very
wise to cast about us, and determine what we will do, if it should come
again, and it is very likely to take us in its progress. But let us not
forget, that it will most easily approach us, through our fears; and
probably, in no disease, are fear and grief more fatal _avant couriers_,
than in affections of the abdominal viscera.

I am half inclined to the opinion of a charming old lady of my
acquaintance, who, after listening to a learned discussion, as to the seat
of the soul--the fountain of sensibility,--and whether or not it was
seated in the conarion--the pineal gland--gave her decided opinion, that
it was seated in the bowels.




No. XXVIII.


The dead speak from their coffins--from their very graves--and verily the
heart of the true mourner hath ears to hear. Gloves and rings are the
valedictories of the dead--their _vales_, or parting tokens, received by
the mourners, at the hand of some surviving friend. This appropriated
word, _vale_, as almost every one knows, is the leave-taking expression
of the mourners; and, when anglicised, and used in the plural number, as
one syllable, signifies those _vales_ or vails, tokens, in various forms,
from shillings to crown pieces, bestowed by parting visitors, on
domestics, from the head waiter to the scullion. They are intended as
leave tokens. Every servant, in the families of the nobility, from the
highest to the lowest, expects a _vale_, not in the classical sense of
Menalcas--_Longum, formose, vale, vale_, but in lawful money, intelligible
coin. This practice had become so oppressive to visitors, in the early
part of the reign of George III., that Sir Jonas Hanway, remarkable, among
other things, for his controversy with Dr. Johnson, on the subject of tea
drinking, wrote and published eight letters to the Duke of Newcastle,
against the custom of giving vails, in which he relates some very amusing
anecdotes. Mr. Hanway, being quietly reproached, by a friend, in high
station, for not accepting his invitations to dinner, more frequently,
frankly replied, "Indeed, my Lord, I cannot afford it." He recites the
manner of leaving a gentleman's house, where he had dined; the servants,
as usual, flocked around him--"your great coat, Sir Jonas"--a
shilling--"your hat, sir:" a shilling--"stick, sir:" a shilling--"umbrella,
sir:" a shilling--"sir, your gloves"--"well, keep the gloves, they are not
worth the shilling." A remarkable example of the insolence of a pampered
menial was related to Mr. Hanway, by Sir Timothy Waldo. He had dined with
the Duke of Newcastle: as he was departing, and handing over his coin to
the train of servants, that lined the hall, he put a crown into the hand
of the chief cook, who returned it, saying, "I never take silver, sir."
"Indeed"--Sir Timothy replied, returning the piece to his pocket, "I never
give gold."

Sir Jonas was an excellent man; and, whatever objections he may have had
to the practice of giving extravagant vails to servants, I think he would
have little or nothing to say, against the practice of giving such vails,
as the dead may be supposed, vicariously, to bestow upon the living, in
the form of rings and gloves. The dead, it must be conceded, seem not so
much disposed to give vails, at present, as they were, one hundred years
ago. In such dispensations, in the olden time, the good man, the
clergyman, was seldom forgotten. Gloves and rings were showered down, upon
the Lord's anointed, at weddings, christenings, and funerals. When a
child, I was very much puzzled, upon two points; first, what became of
all the old moons, and, secondly, what the minister did with his gloves
and rings. If he had had the hands of Briareus, he could not have worn
them all.

An interesting little volume is now lying upon my table, which explains
the mystery, not at all, in relation to the moons, but most happily, in
respect to rings and gloves. It is the Astronomical Diary or Almanac of
Nathaniel Ames, Boston, New England, printed by J. Draper, for the
booksellers, 1748. This little book is interleaved; and the blank leaves
are written over, in the hand-writing of good old Andrew Eliot, who, April
14, 1742, was ordained pastor of the new North Church, in Boston, as
colleague with Mr. Webb, where, possessing very little of the locomotive
or migratory spirit of the moderns, this excellent man remained, till his
death, Sept. 13, 1778. If gall and wormwood are essential to the
perfection of Christian theology, Dr. Eliot was singularly deficient, as a
teacher of religion. His sermons were very full of practical godliness,
and singularly free from brimstone and fire. He was elected President of
Harvard University, but his attachment to his people caused him to decline
the appointment. After this passing tribute, let us return to the little
Almanac of 1748. On the inside of the marble cover the first entry
commences thus: "Gloves, 1748, January." The gloves, received by Dr.
Eliot, are set against particular names, and under every month, in the
year. Certain names are marked with asterisks, doubtless denoting, that
the parties were dead, or _stelligeri_, after the fashion of the College
catalogue; and thus the good doctor discriminated, between funerals, and
weddings and christenings. Although a goodly number of rings are enrolled,
together with the gloves, yet a page is devoted to rings, exclusively, in
the middle of the book. This is not arranged, under months, but years; and
commences, in 1741, the year before he was ordained, as colleague with Mr.
Webb. At the bottom of the record, the good man states how many pairs were
kid; how many were lambswool; and how many were long or women's gloves,
intended, of course, for the parson's lady.

These rings and gloves were sold, by the worthy doctor, with the exception
of such, as were distributed, in his own household, not a small one, for
he left eleven children. A prejudice might have prevailed, an hundred
years ago, against dead men's gloves, similar to that, recorded in the
proverb, against dead men's shoes; certain it is, these gloves did not
meet with a very ready market. It appears by the record, in the doctor's
own hand, that Mrs. Avis was entrusted with fifteen pairs of women's and
three dozen of men's; and returned, unsold, eight pairs of women's, and
one dozen and ten pairs of men's. A dozen pairs of men's were committed to
Mrs. Langstaff; half a dozen women's to Mr. Langdon, and seventeen pairs
to Captain Millens. What a glove and ring market the dear Doctor's study
must have been. In thirty-two years, he appears to have received two
thousand nine hundred and forty pairs of gloves, at funerals, weddings,
and baptisms. Of these he sold to the amount of fourteen hundred and forty
one pounds, eighteen shillings, and one penny, old tenor, equal to about
six hundred and forty dollars. He also sold a goodly number of his rings.
From all this, the conclusion is irresistible, that this truly good man
and faithful minister must have been, if I may use the common expression,
hand and glove with his parishioners. The little volume before me contains
the record of other matters, highly interesting, doubtless, in their day
but of precious little moment, at the present hour. Of what importance can
it be, I beg leave to inquire, for any one to know, on what precise day,
one hundred years ago, the worthy pastor borrowed a box of candles of
Deacon Langdon, or a loaf of sugar of his own father, or ten shillings,
old tenor, of Deacon Grant! Who, of the present generation, cares, on what
day, one hundred years ago, he repaid those three pounds to Deacon
Barrett! Of what consequence to any living mortal can it be, that, on the
thirteenth day of April, one hundred years ago, Betty Bouve came to live
at the manse, as a maid! It is past. The last of that box of candles has
burnt down into the socket, long ago. That sugar has dissolved, and lost
its sweetness. And Betty Bouve! The places that knew her know her no more.
Her sweeping days are over; for time, with its irresistible broom, hath
swept her from the face of the earth, and given her the grave for a
dustpan.

The good old man himself has been called to the account of his
stewardship. "It was a pleasant day," saith Father Gannett, on the
fly-leaf of his almanac, "Sept. 15, 1778, when near four hundred couples
and thirty-two carriages followed the remains of Dr. Andrew 

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