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teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion. Besides the extraneous substances, like pieces of small boxes, or combs handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of opal.

"Near the same plot of ground, for about six yards compass, were digged up coals and incinerated substances, which begat conjecture that this was the Ustrina or place of burning their bodies, or some sacrificing place unto the manes, which was properly below the surface of the ground, as the aræ and altars unto the gods and heroes above it."

Thus inspired, he pours forth, without particular order or design, his richest treasures of imagery and thought. These may be divided into two classes-those learned commentaries which relate to modes of interment, and those intense reflections which he makes on death, life, and duration.

He

opens the subjects with a general survey or map of the earthy region through which he is about to conduct us :

"In the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers; who, if two or three yards were open about the surface, would not care to rake the bowels of Potosi, and regions toward the centre. Nature hath furnished one part of the earth, and man another. The treasures of time lie high, in urns, coyns, and monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities, and shows of all varieties; which reveals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a díscovery. That great antiquity, America, lay buried for a thousand years; and a large part of the earth is still in the urn unto

us.

"Though if Adam were made out of an extract of the earth, all parts might challenge a restitution, yet few have returned their bones far lower than they might receive them; not affecting the graves of giants, under hilly and heavy coverings, but content with less than their own depth, have wished their bones might lie soft, and the earth be light upon them; even such as hope to rise again, would not be content with central interment, or so desperately to place their reliques as to lie beyond discovery, and in no way to be seen again; which happy contrivance hath made communication with our forefathers, and left unto our view some parts which they never beheld themselves."

Here his genius seems to make its way through the softened mould. We feel as if we could be delighted to grope all our lives about the roots of vegetables for the treasures of time which lie so near us. How sublimely does he, in his antiquarian zeal, represent America as when undiscovered" a buried antiquity," and expand his subject to the limits of the world! With what rich conceit does he allude to the solemnities of our frame, and with what a placid and smiling allusion does he insinuate our hopes of rising from the tomb! When he dis

cusses modes of burial, instead of dwelling with fondness on one of them, he dignifies them all. He treats burial superstitions, however fantastic, as most holy. Assuming with a philosophic charity, that "all customs were founded on some bottom of reason," he finds traces of noble imagination, or deep wisdom, in the most opposite rites and ceremonials. Some," says he,

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"Being of the opinion of Thales, that water was the original of all things, thought it most equal to submit unto the principle of putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment. Others conceived it most natural to end in fire, as due unto the master principle in the composition, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus. And therefore heaped up large piles, more actively to waft them towards that element, whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into worms, and left a lasting parcel of their composition.

"Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser commixture, and firing out the ethereal particles so deeply immersed in it. And such as by tradition or rational conjecture held any hint of the final pyre of all things, or that this element at last must be too hard for all the rest, might conceive most naturally of the fiery dissolution."

And again :

"The Scythians who swore by wind and sword, that is, by life and death, were so far from burning their bodies, that they declined all interment, and made their graves in the air. And the Ichthyophagi, or fish-eating nations about Egypt, affected the sea for their grave: thereby declining visible corruption, and restoring the debt of their bodies. Whereas the old heroes in Homer, dreaded nothing more than water or drowning; probably upon the old opinion of the fiery substance of the soul, only extinguishable by that element; and therefore the poet emphatically implieth the total destruction in this kind of death, which happened to Ajax Oileus."

The following appears to us some of the most beautiful moralizing ever drawn from funeral solemnities.

"Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs; and since the religion of one seems madness unto another, to afford an account or rational of old rights, requires no rigid reader. That they kindled the pyre aversely, or turning their face from it, was an handsome symbol of unwilling ministration; that they washed their bones with wine and milk, that the mother wrapt them in linen, and dried them in her bosom, the first fostering part, and place of their nourishment; that they opened their eyes toward heaven, before they kindled the fire, as the place of their hopes or original, were no improper ceremonies. Their last valediction, thrice uttered by the attendants, was also very solemn, and somewhat answered by Christians, who thought

it too little, if they threw not the earth thrice upon the interred body. That in strewing their tombs the Romans affected the rose, the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle; that the funeral-pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant, lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes; wherein Christians which deck their coffins with bays have found a more elegant emblem-for that it seeming dead, will restore itself from the root, and its dry and exsuccous leaves resume their verdure again; which if we mistake not, we have also observed in furze. Whether the planting of yew in church yards hold not its original from ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit conjecture."

Young, in one of his cold conceits, exclaims, "How populous, how vital is the grave!" in reference merely to the obvious truth, that the number of the dead exceeds that of the living. Sir Thomas Browne, by his intense earnestness and vivid solemnity, seems really to endow the grave itself with life. He does not linger in the valley of the shadow of death, but enters within the portals, where the regal destroyer keeps his awful state; and yet there is nothing thin, airy, or unsubstantial -nothing ghostly or shocking-in his works. He unveils, with a reverent touch, the material treasures of the sepulchre; he describes these with the learning of an antiquary; moralizes on them with the wisdom of a philosopher; broods over them with the tenderness of an enthusiast; and associates with them sweet and congenial images, with the fancy of a poet. He is the laureat of the king of terrors; and most nobly does he celebrate the earthly magnificence of his kingdom. He discovers consolations not only in the hopes of immortality, but in the dusty and sad ornaments of the tomb. How richly does he speak of the liquors found in old sepulchres, as if death were the chief butler of time, and preserved patriarchal flavours within his vaults!

"Some find sepulchral vessels containing liquors, which time hath incrassated into gellies. For beside these lachrymatories, notable lamps, with vessels of oils and aromatical liquors, attended noble ossuaries. And some yet retaining a vinosity and spirit in them, which if any have tasted they have far exceeded the palates of antiquity. Liquors not to be computed by years of annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and the fatal periods of kingdoms. The draughts of consulary date were but crude unto these, and opimian wine but in the must unto them."

How intense is the following passage, relative to the mingling of bones in the same urn!

"Some finding many fragments of sculls in these urns, suspected a mixture of bones; in none we searched was there cause of such con

jecture, though sometimes they declined not that practice. The ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia: of Achilles with those of Patroclus. All urns contained not single ashes; without confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones, passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn by urn, and touch but in their names. And many were so curious to continue their living relations, that they contrived large and family urns, wherein the ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might successively be received, at least some parcels thereof, while their collateral memorials lay in minor vessels about them."

Never surely by any other writer was sentiment thus put into dry bones. Ashes here seem endowed with living passion. The imagination rests satisfied with the neighbourhood of bodies in the grave, and with the mere touching of names. Sir Thomas Browne ennobles and consecrates whatever he touches. He makes us feel that magnitude is not necessary to venerableness, for in his works, things which before appeared insignificant, impress us with an awful grandeur. He requires not a vast or gigantic object to stir and affect him. He perceives the high attributes of the smallest things-the antiquity and the consecration which they share with the mightiest-and renders an urn or a pyramid equal to the mind. His power, like that of death, levels distinctions; for he looks into the soul of things, instead of contemplating merely their external forms. Can any thing be said of the ruins of Babylon equal to the following celebration of a few sepulchral urns? "Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his reliques, or might not gladly say,

"Sic

ego componi versus in ossa velim ?"

"Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments." Thus, by shewing that the lowliest things have consecrating associations equal to the stateliest, he vindicates to Nature and Time, those regalities which we are prone to attribute to stupendous remains of human skill, as if they appertained to them as inherent properties, and were not merely shed on them by hallowing years.

But Sir Thomas Browne finds matter of deeper speculation in the regions of the grave, than any to which we have yet particularly alluded. He derives the nobleness of our na

ture, even from its mortality on earth. In the most opposite ceremonials, he traces the spirit of a higher and more perfect life. Thus he treats the disregard of interment, as evincing a sense that the frame was but the shell of a finer essence, and the solemnities of burial as proving that man, in extending his cares beyond death, displays the instinct of future being. Every thing with him has a profound and sacred meaning. He embodies the abstractions of humanity in the stateliest forms, elevating even the brevity of existence into a distinct being, and endowing it with venerable attributes. Past and Present, Life and Dissolution, Time and Immortality, seem to meet in his works, as in a fane, "for festal purpose decked with unrejoicing berries!" He thus immortalizes transitoriness, and makes oblivion sublime:

"Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the aquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time that grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.'

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Can any thing be more ingenious, yet more solemn, more quaint, yet more impressive, than the following dissuasive from anxiety for earthly renown?

"Restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons; one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations. And being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, all that's past a moment."

and

What reflections can be more strange, yet more familiar,

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