of their sepulchres; and Ovid, that ghosts came out of their sepulchres and wandered about; and Clemens Alexandrinus, in his Admonitions to the Gentiles, upbraids them with the gods they worshipped; which, says he, are wont to appear at tombs and sepulchres, and which are nothing but fading spectres and airy forms.

A passage in the same father supports Mede's conclusion that the heathen connected the presence and power of dæmons (as the Greeks called the souls of the departed) with their coffins and sepulchres, as though there were some natural bond of union between the deceased and their relics.

Churchyards, as Moresinus instructs us, were used for the purposes of interment in order to remove this superstition. Burial in ancient times was without the walls of cities and towns. Lycurgus, he tells us, first introduced grave-stones within the walls, and so, as it were, brought home the ghosts to the very doors. Similarly we compel horses to make the nearest approaches we can to the objects at which they take alarm.

Before the time of Christianity, when it was held unlawful to bury the dead within the cities, they used to carry them out into the fields hard by, and there deposit them. "Towards the end of the sixth Century" (writes Strutt), "Augustine obtained of king Ethelbert, a Temple of Idols (where the King used to worship before his conversion), and made a Burying Place of it; but St. Cuthbert afterwards obtained leave to have Yards made to the Churches, proper for the reception of the dead."

One of the Suffolk Articles of Inquiry in 1638 was: "Have any Playes, Feasts, Banquets, Suppers, Church Ales, Drinkings, Temporai Courts or Leets, Lay Juries, Musters, Exercise of Dauncing, Stoole ball, Foot ball, or the like, or any other profane usage been suffered to be kept in your Church, Chappell, or Church Yard?"

Churchyards are certainly as little frequented by apparitions and ghosts as other places, and therefore it is a weakness to be afraid of passing through them. Superstition, however, will always attend ignorance; and the Night, as she continues to be the mother of dews, will also never fail of being the fruitful parent of chimerical fears. As Dryden has it—

"When the Sun sets, Shawdows that shew'd at Noon
But small, appear most long and terrible."

A singular superstition respecting burial in that part of the churchyard which lies north of the church still pervades many of the northern districts of England, though every trace of it has been tradicated in the vicinity of the Metropolis. It is that that is the part appropriated for the interment of unbaptized infants, of persons xcommunicated, of those who have been executed, or of those who ave laid violent hands upon themselves.

So Shakespeare

"Now it is the Time of Night,

That the Graves, all gaping wide,
Ev'ry one lets forth his Sprite
In the Church-way path to glide."

Thus we find in Martin's Month's Mind (1589): "He died excommunicate, and they might not therefore burie him in Christian Buriall, and his Will was not to come there in any wise. His Bodie should not be buried in any Church (especiallye Cathedrall, which ever he detested), Chappell, nor Church Yard; for they have been prophaned with Superstition. He would not be laid East and West (for he ever went against the haire), but North and South: I thinke because Ab Aquilone omne malum, and the South wind ever brings corruption with it."

The oratories of Christians were divided, says Laurence in a sermon preached before Charles in 1640, into an atrium, or church-yard; a sanctum, or church: and a sanctum sanctorum, or chancel. "They did conceive a greater degree of Sanctitie in one of them than in another, and in one place of them than another. Churchyards they thought profained by Sports, the whole circuit both before and after Christ was privileged for refuge, none out of the Communion of the Kirke permitted to lie there, any consecrate Ground preferred for Interment before that which was not consecrat, and that in an higher esteem which was in an higher degree of Consecration, and that in the highest which was neerest the Altar."

In The Wise and Faithful Steward (1657) we read of Benjamin Rhodes, Steward to the Earl of Elgin: "He requested to be interred in the open Church Yard, on the North side (to crosse the received superstition, as he thought, of the constant choice of the South side) near the new Chappel."

White's History of Selborne represents the churchyard as quite disproportionate to the size of the church and the extent of the parish, "especially as all wish to be buried on the South side, which is become such a Mass of Mortality that no person can be there interred without disturbing or displacing the Bones of his Ancestors. There is reason to suppose that it once was larger, and extended to what is now the Vicarage Court and Garden. At the East end are a few Graves; yet none, till very lately, on the North side; but, as two or three Families of best repute have begun to bury in that quarter, prejudice may wear out by degrees, and their example be followed by the rest of the neighbourhood.'

The inhabitants of Hawsted in Suffolk, according to Cullum (1784), had a great partiality to burying on the south and east sides of the churchyard.

"About twenty years ago, when I first became Rector, and observed how those sides (particularly the South) were crowded with Graves, I prevailed upon a few persons to bury their friends on the North, which was entirely vacant; but the example was not followed as I hoped it would: and they continue to bury on the South, where a Corpse is rarely interred without disturbing the bones of its Ancestors. This partiality may perhaps at first have partly arisen from the antient Custom of praying for the dead; for as the usual approach to this and most Country Churches is by the South, it was natural for burials to be on that side, that those who were going to divine service might, in their way, by the sight of the graves of their friends, be put in mind to offer up a prayer for the welfare of their souls; and even now, since the custom of praying for the dead is abolished, the same obvious situation of

Graves may excite some tender recollection in those who view them, and silently implore the passing tribute of a sigh.' That this motive has its influence, may be concluded from the Graves that appear on the North side of the Church Yard, when the approach to the Church happens to be that way; of this there are some few instances in this neighbourhood."

Of Whiteford church Pennant writes: "I step into the Church Yard and sigh over the number of departed which fill the inevitable retreat. In no distant time the North side, as in all other Welsh Churches, will, through some Superstition, be occupied only by persons executed, or by Suicides." And the same authority testifies that in North Wales none but excommunicated, or very poor and friendless people, are buried on the north side of the churchyard.

The Cambrian Register for 1796 has the following very apposite passage respecting churchyards in Wales: "In Country Church Yards the Relations of the deceased crowd them into that part which is South of the Church; the North side, in their Opinion, being unhallowed Ground, fit only to be the Dormitory of still-born Infants and Suicides. For an example to his neighbours, and as well to escape the barbarities of the Sextons, the Writer of the above Account ordered himself to be buried on the North side of the Church Yard. But as he was accounted an Infidel when alive, his Neighbours could not think it creditable to associate with him when dead. His dust, therefore, is likely to pass a solitary retirement, and for ages to remain undisturbed by the hands of Men."

In the Trial of Fitzgerald and others for the murder of M'Donnel in Ireland in 1786, we read: "The body of Mr. Fitzgerald, immediately after execution, was carried to the ruins of Turlagh House, and was waked in a Stable adjoining, with a few Candles placed about it. On the next day it was carried to the Church Yard of Turlagh, where he was buried on what is generally termed the WRONG SIDE OF THE CHURCH, in his cloaths, without a Coffin."

Paradoxical Assertions and Philosophical Problems, by R. H. (1664), maintains

"Doubtless that Man's Bones in the North Church Yard rest in more quiet than his that lies entomb'd in the Chancel."

The Popish practice is defined by Moresinus to be that those who were reputed good Christians lay towards the South and East, while those who had been executed, or had laid violent hands upon themselves, or had otherwise offended, were buried towards the North. This used to be the custom of old in Scotland, as Moresinus indicates.

Our quotation from Martin's Month's Mind evidences also that there was something honourable or dishonourable in the position of graves; the common and honourable direction being from East to West, and the dishonourable from North to South.

Hearne, the antiquary, had such correct notions on this head that he left orders for his grave to be made straight by a compass, due East and West; in consequence of which his monument occupies a position not parallel with that of any of the other graves. This seeming wryness gives it a very remarkable appearance.

At the east end of the chancel, in the churchyard of Fornham All

Welsh graves, according to Gough, were curiously matted round with single or double matting, and stuck with flowers, box, or laurel, which were frequently renewed.

Sinclair affirms that, though the people of Kilfinichen and Kilviceven, in Argyllshire, were far from being superstitious (1795), yet they continued to retain some opinions handed down by their ancestors, possibly from the age of the Druids. Among other things they believed that the spirit of the person last interred kept watch around the churchyard until the arrival of another occupant; to whom its custody was transmitted. The same writer notes the occurrence of a singular scene when two burials were to take place in one churchyard on the same day, in a district where the belief prevailed that the ghost of the person last buried kept the gate of the churchyard until it was relieved by the next victim of Death. Each of the two parties staggered forward with all possible expedition to consign their own friend to the dust first; and if in the course of this competition they met at the gate, the dead, being thrown down, awaited the decision, by blows of the living, of the momentous question as to the portership of the gate.

The old Register of Christ Church in Hampshire has the entry

66

'April 14. 1604. Christian Steevens, the wife of Thomas Steevens, was buried in Child-birth, and buried by Women for she was a Papishe."

In Molle's Living Librarie (1621) we read: "Who would beleeve without superstition (if experience did not make it credible), that most commonly all the BEES die in their Hives, if the Master or Mistresse of the House chance to die, except the Hives be presently removed into some other place? And yet I know this hath hapned to folke no way stained with superstition." In curious contrast to this, a vulgar notion prevails widely in England that when bees remove or go away from their hives, the owner of them will die soon after; and we have been assured that when a Devonian makes a purchase of bees, payment is made not in money, but in articles equivalent in value to the sum agreed upon, corn for example; and the bees are never removed but on a Good Friday.

The "Argus," a London newspaper, dated 13th September 1790, refers to the superstitious Devonshire practice at funerals of turning round the bee hives belonging to the deceased, at the precise moment of the corpse being carried out of the house.

LAYING FLAT STONES IN CHURCHES AND CHURCHYARDS OVER

GRAVES.

This custom of laying flat stones in our churches and churchyards over the graves of the better class of folk, for the purpose of inscribing thereon the name, age, and character of the deceased, has been transmitted from very ancient times. Cicero's writings contain references to it.

In Mason's Elegy written in the churchyard of Neath we read

"And round that fane the sons of toil repose,

Who drove the plough-share, or the sail who spread,
With wives, with children, all in measur'd rows:

Two whiten'd stones well mark the feet and head."

Malkin, who quotes the passage in his Scenery of South Wales, explains that the stones at each end of the grave are whitened with lime at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide.

At the funeral of a rich old farmer at Cullompton a laughable incident occurred. Just as the corpse was placed in the hearse, and as the horsemen, of whom there was a large number, were drawn up in order for the procession, some one called out "Turn the Bees." A servant, unfamiliar with the custom, instead of turning the hives about, lifted them up, and laid them down on their sides; whereupon the bees instantly attacked and fastened on the horses and their riders. It was in vain they galloped off, for the bees hotly pursued them, leaving their stings as marks of their indignation. A general confusion ensued, attended with loss of hats, wigs, and other apparel, and the corpse during the conflict was left unattended. Nor was it until after a considerable time that the funeral attendants could be got together, to proceed to the interment of their deceased friend.

GARLANDS IN COUNTRY CHURCHES, AND STREWING FLOWERS ON THE GRAVES.

It is still the custom in many country churches to hang garlands of flowers over the seats of deceased virgins; in token, says Bourne, of esteem and love, and as an emblem of their reward in the heavenly Church. In the primitive Christian Church they used to place crowns of flowers at their heads. For this statement we have the authority of John Damascene, Gregory Nyssen, St Jerome, and St Austin.

In rural Yorkshire, when a virgin dies, the garland is carried before the body in the funeral procession by one closely approaching the deceased in size, age, and general appearance, and afterward is suspended in the church. This garland sometimes is composed wholly of white paper; occasionally the floral devices are coloured.

The Morning Chronicle for September 25, 1792, contains an elegiac ode by Miss Seward, wherein this reference to the village of Eyam, in Derbyshire, occurs

"Now the low Beams with Paper Garlands hung,
In memory of some Village Youth or Maid,
Draw the soft tear, from thrill'd remembrance sprung,
How oft my Childhood mark'd that tribute paid.

The Gloves suspended by the Garland's side,
White as its snowy Flow'rs with Ribbands tied.
Dear Village! long these Wreaths funereal spread-
Simple memorial of the early dead!"

To this is appended a note: "The antient custom of hanging a Garland of white Roses made of writing paper, and a pair of white