themselves to let down the Corpse into the Grave, by mourning Cords fastened to the handles of the Coffin; the Chief-Mourner standing at the head, and the rest of the Relations arranged according to their propinquity. When the Coffin is let down and adjusted in the Grave, the Mourners first, and then all the surrounding multitude, uncover their heads there is no Funeral Service read: no Oration delivered: but that solemn pause, for about the space of ten minutes, when every one is supposed to be meditating on Death and Immortality, always struck my heart in the most awful manner: never more than on the occasion here alluded to. The sound of the Cord, when it fell on the Coffin, still seems to vibrate on my Ear."

In Yorkshire the vulgar belief (according to Aubrey) was that, after a person's death, the soul went over Whinny Moor. Down to 1624 a woman attended at the funeral and sang the following song

The Whinnes shall prick thee to the bare beane,

And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Whinny-Moor that thou mayst pass

Every night and awle

To Brig o' Dread thou comest at last,

And Christ receive thy sawle.

From Brig o' Dread that thou mayst pass
Every night and awle,

To Purgatory Fire thou com'st at last,
And Christ receive thy sawle.

If ever thou gave either Milke or Drink,
Every night and awle,

The Fire shall never make the shrink,

And Christ receive thy sawle.

But if Milk nor Drink thou never gave nean

Every night and awle,

The Fire shall burn thee to the bare beane,

And Christ receive thy sawle."

• pleot, water.

+ Whin is furze.

Shoen.

With one or two trifling variations this song is printed under the title of A Lyke-Wake Dirge in Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

TORCHES AND LIGHTS AT FUNERALS.

The custom of using torches and lights at funerals or in funeral processions seems to be one of long standing. The Romans anciently solemnised their funerals at night with torches, to give notice of their approach, so that they might not come in the way of their magistrates and priests, whose sanctity was supposed to be violated by the sight of a corpse, insomuch that an expiatory sacrifice was required to purify them before they could perform their sacred functions. In later times public funerals were celebrated in the daytime, not without the addition of torches; private funerals continuing to be restricted to the night.

Coming down to Christian times, however, the learned Gregory maintains the harmless import of candles, as showing that the departed souls are not quite put out, but, having walked on earth as children of light, are now gone to walk before God in the light of the living.

Strutt tells us the burning of torches was reckoned very honourable, the number indeed indicating the special regard of the person who undertook to provide the funeral of his deceased friend.

The will of William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, executed April 29, 1397, directs the attendance at his funeral of twenty-four poor people, clothed in black gowns and red hoods,“ each carrying a lighted Torch of eight pounds weight."

The accounts of the churchwardens of St Margaret's, Westminster, for the year 1460, have the entry

"Item. rec' de Joh'e Braddyns die sepultur' Robti Thorp gen' p. iiii. Tor' vjs. viijd;"

upon which Pegge remarks that little was done in Papal times without lights. The torches cost Is. 8d. apiece; but they were of various prices, presumably regulated by their size. The churchwardens apparently provided them, so that they were an article of profit to the Church. Nichols conceives they were made of wax, and in ordinary cases let out by the Church and charged for according to consumption. This view is supported in the York accompts, in which occur charges for wax.

Under the date of 1519 the books of St Margaret's record

"Item, Mr. Hall, the Curate, for iv. Torches, and for the best Lights, at the Buryal of Mr. Henry Vued, my Lord Cardinal's Servant. vjs. vjď.”

So also in the accounts of St Lawrence parish, Reading, we read— "A.D. 1502. It. rec, of wast of Torchis at the berying of sir John Hide, Vicar of Sonyng, ijs. vjd."

A.D. 1503. It. rec. for wast of Torchys at the burying of John Long, maist' of the Gram' Scole, vjs. viijd."

A.D. 1504. It. rec. of the same Margaret " (late the wife of Thomas Platt), for wast of Torchis at the yer mind of the seid Thomas, xxd."

At the funeral of Sir Thomas Gresham, which took place in 1556, we learn that he had "four dozen of great staff torches and a dozen of great long torches."

The author of Hunting of Purgatory to Death (1561) says—

"If the Christians should bury their dead in the nighte time, or if they should burne their bodies, as the Painims did, they might well use Torches as well as the Painims without any just reprehension and blame." 'Moreover," he proceeds, "it is not to be doubted but that the auncient Byshops and Ministers of the Church did bryng in this manner of bearinge of Torches and of singinge in Funerals, not for thentent and purpose that the Painimes did use it, nor yet for to confirme their superstitious abuses and errours, but rather for to abolishe them. For they did see that it was an hard thing to pluck those old and inveterate Customes from the hartes of them that had been nouselled in them from their youth. They did forsee that if they had buried their dead without som honest ceremonies, as the worlde did then take them, it had bene yet more harde to put away those olde rotten errors from them that were altogether wedded unto them." Further: "Chrisostome, likening the deade whome they followed with burnynge Torches unto Wrestlers and Runners, had a respect unto the customes and fashions of Grekeland, beyng a Greeke himcelfe, among whiche there was a certain kind of running, after this manner : The firste did beare a Torche, being lighted, in his hand, which, being weary, he did deliver unto him that followeth next after him. He againe that had received the Torche, if he chaunced to be wery, did the like: and so all the residue that followeth in order. Hence among the Grekes and Latines to geve the Lampe or Torche unto another hath beene taken for to put other in his place, after that one is werye and hath perfourmed his course. This may very wel be applyed unto them, that departe out of this world." Again: "Singinge, bearinge of Lightes, and other like Ceremonies as were used in their Buringes and Funeralles, were ordeyned, or rather permitted and suffred by y auncient Bishoppes and Pastours, for to abolish, put downe, and dryve awal the superstition and ydolatri yt the heathen and paynymes used about their dead and not for anye opinion y they had, y such thinges could profite the Soules departed, as it doth manifestly appear by their owne writinges."

Jorevin, whom I have before cited, speaks of the body of a lord, who was buried in the neighbourhood of Shrewsbury, being taken to the church upon the shoulders of six men. It was covered with a large cloth, the four corners of which were held by as many of the nearest relatives of the deceased with one hand, the other carrying a bough (most probably a branch of rosemary); while other connections and friends held in one hand a flambeau and in the other a bough. Thus they proceeded through the street, in silence, to the church. On conclusion of the service the clergyman, who, like the rest of the congregation, had a bough in his hand, threw it on the corpse in the grave. This example was followed by the relatives, who also extinguished their flambeaux in the earth with which the grave was to be closed; and the company retired to their several homes without further ceremony.

Wordsworth in his Lyrical Ballads testifies that in the North of England, when a funeral takes place, a basin full of sprigs of boxwood is set at the door of the house from which the coffin is removed, and each of the attendants generally takes a sprig to throw into the grave,

FUNERAL SERMONS.

These are of great antiquity, and used to be very general amongst us. The custom was retained latest on Portland Island in Dorsetshire, where the minister had half a guinea for each discourse, by which means he annually obtained a considerable sum. This species of luxury in grief prevailed widely there. Indeed, as the notion of posthumous honour was associated with the institution, all classes were eager to secure it, even for the youngest members of the family. The fee is nearly the same as that mentioned by Gay in his Dirge"Twenty good shillings in a rag I laid :

Be ten the parson's for his sermon paid."

In The Burninge of Paules Church in London (1561) we read: Gregory "Nazanzene hais his Funerall Sermons and Orations in the commendacion of the party departed; so hais Ambrose for Theodosius and Valentinian the Emperours, and for his brother Statirus."

Misson pronounces our common practice in his time to have been to carry the corpse into the body of the church and to set it upon a couple of tressels, when either " a funeral sermon is preached, containing an eulogium upon the deceased, or certain prayers said, adapted to the occasion."

Cotgrave's Treasury of Wit and Language has this reference

"In all this Sermon I have heard little commendations

Of our dear Brother departed: rich men doe not go

To the Pit-hole without Complement of Christian Buriall."

Even Madam Cresswell had her funeral sermon. Her will directed that a sermon should be preached at her funeral, and that the preacher should have ten pounds; but upon the express condition that he was to say nothing but what was well of her. With some difficulty a preacher was found to undertake the task. Expatiating generally on the subject of mortality, he concluded with saying, "By the Will of the deceased, it is expected that I should mention her, and say nothing but what was well of her. All that I shall say of her therefore is this: She was born well, she lived well, and she died well; for she was born with the name of Cresswell, she lived in Clerkenwell, and she died in Bridewell." In the same spirit Fuller's Appeal of Injured Innocence narrates: "When one was to preach the Funeral Sermon of a most vicious and generally hated person, all wondered what he would say in his praise; the preacher's friends fearing, his foes hoping that, for his fee, he would force his conscience to flattery. For one thing, said the minister, this man is to be spoken well of by all; and, for another thing, he is to be spoken ill of by none. The first is because God made him; the second, because he is dead."

Gough derives the practice of delivering funeral sermons for eminent Christians of all denominations, whether founded in esteem, sanctioned by fashion, or obtained by reward, from the orations delivered over the remains of Christian martyrs. Our ancestors, he writes, before the Reformation, took especial care to secure the repose

and wellbeing of their souls by masses and deeds of charity and piety; but, when the painful doctrine of purgatory had been abolished by that event, they were more solicitous to have their memories embalmed, and their good deeds handed down to posterity. Accordingly specific texts were appointed in their wills to be preached from, with sums of money to pay for such preaching. Like dinners held in memory of benefactors, commemorative sermons originated in the feeling of gratitude.

In this connection we have the authority of the author of the Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland for the statement that in olden time it was usual there to have a bard for the purpose of writing an elegy on the deceased, enumerating his virtues, genealogy, wealth, and other particulars, the burden being "Oh! why did he die ?"

BLACK USED IN MOURNING AT FUNERALS.

Durandus, mentioning black as anciently in use at funerals, admonishes us that St Cyprian seems to have inveighed against it, as the indication of sorrow for an event which to the Christian was matter of joy.

Gough supplies numerous quotations from the classics in proof of black having mostly been the colour of mourning garments from the earliest antiquity; and Polydore Vergil says

"Plutarch writeth that the Women in their Mournyng laied a parte all purple, golde, and sumptuous Apparell, and were clothed bothe they and their kinsfolk in white Apparel, like as then the ded Body was wrapped in white Clothes. The white coloure was thought fittest for the ded, because it is clere, pure, and sincer, and leaste defiled. Of this Ceremonie, as I take it, the French Quenes toke occasion, after the death of their housebandes the Kynges, to weare onely white Clothyng, and, if there bee any such Widdowe, she is commonly called the White Quene. Mournyng Garments for the moste part be altogether of blacke coloure, and they use to weare theim a whole yere continually, onlesse it bee because of a generall triumphe or rejoysyng, or newe Magistrate chosyng, or els when thei bee toward Marriage."

Cotgrave's Treasury of Wit has these lines-

"Funeralls hide Men in civill wearing,
And are to the Drapers a good hearing,
Make th' Heralds laugh in their black rayment,
And all dye worthies dye worth payment
To th' Altar offerings, though their fame,
And all the charity of their name

'Tween Heav'n and this, yeeld no more light,
Than rotten Trees which shine in the night.'

The Athenian Oracle pronounces that "Black is the fittest emblem of that sorrow and grief the mind is supposed to be clouded with; and, as Death is the privation of Life, and Black a privation of Light, 'tis very probable this colour has been chosen to denote sadness,