In and hair, give the most lasting defiance to corruption. an hydropical body, ten years buried in the churchyard, we met with a fat concretion, where the nitre of the earth, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest Castile soap, whereof part remaineth with us. After a battle with the Persians, the Roman corpses decayed in few days, while the Persian bodies remained dry and uncorrupted. Bodies in the same ground do not uniformly dissolve, nor bones equally moulder; whereof in the opprobrious disease, we expect no long duration. The body of the Marquis of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely cereclothed, that after seventy-eight years was found uncorrupted.* Common tombs preserve not beyond powder: a firmer consistence and compage of parts might be expected from arefaction, deep burial, or charcoal. The greatest antiquities of mortal bodies may remain in putrefied bones, whereof, though we take not in the pillar of Lot's wife, or metamorphosis of Ortelius,+ some may be older than pyramids, in the putre 8 * Of Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, whose body being buried 1530, was 1608, upon the cutting open of the cerecloth, found perfect and nothing corrupted, the flesh not hardened, but in colour, proportion, and softness like an ordinary corpse newly to be interred.-Burton's Descript. of Leicestershire. + In his map of Russia. 6 hair, &c.] This assertion of the durability of human hair has been corroborated by modern experiment. M. Pictet, of Geneva, instituted a comparison between recent human hair and that from a mummy brought from Teneriffe, with reference to the constancy of those properties which render hair important as a hygrometrick substance. For this purpose, hygrometers, constructed according to the principles of Saussure were used; one with a fresh hair, the other from the mummy. The results of the experiments were, that the hygrometrick quality of the Guanche hair is sensibly the same as that of recent hair.-Edin. Phil. Journal, xiii. 196. 7 In an hydropical body, &c.] This substance was afterwards found in the cemetery of the Innocents at Paris, by Fourcroy, and became known to the French chemists under the name of adipo-cire. Sir Thomas is admitted to have been the first discoverer of it. metamorphosis, &c.] His map of Russia (Theatrum orbis Terrarum, fol. Lond. 1606) exhibits but one "metamorphosis," a vignette of some figures kneeling before a figure seated in a tree, who is sprinkling something upon his audience. On other trees in the distance hang When Alexander fied relicks of the general inundation. opened the tomb of Cyrus, the remaining bones discovered his proportion, whereof urnal fragments afford but a bad conjecture, and have this disadvantage of grave interments, that they leave us ignorant of most personal discoveries. For since bones afford not only rectitude and stability but figure unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy appendencies, and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might hang in their full consistencies. A full-spread cariola* shows a well-shaped horse behind; handsome formed skulls give some analogy to fleshy resemblance. A critical view of bones makes a good distinction of sexes. Even colour is not beyond conjecture, since it is hard to be deceived in the distinction of Negroes' skulls.† Dante's characters are to be found in skulls as well as faces. Hercules is not only known by his foot. Other parts make out their comproportions and inferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the head measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives * That part in the skeleton of a horse, which is made by the haunchbones. For their extraordinary thickness.9 The poet Dante, in his view of Purgatory, found gluttons so meagre, and extenuated, that he conceited them to have been in the siege of Jerusalem, and that it was easy to have discovered Homo or Omo in their faces: M being made by the two lines of their cheeks, arching over the eye-brows to the nose, and their sunk eyes making O O which makes up Omo. Parén l'occhiaje anella senza gemme : Chi, nel viso degli uomini legge OмO, Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'emme.-Purgat. xxiii. 31. several figures. This is the legend beneath :-" Kergessi gens catervatim degit, id est in hordis: habetque ritum hujusmodi. Cum rem divinam ipsorum sacerdos peragit, sanguinem, lac et fimum jumentorum accipit, ac terræ miscet, inque vas quoddam infundit eoque arborem scandit, atque concione habita, in populum spargit, atque hæc aspersio pro Deo habetur et colitur. Cum quis diem inter illos obit, loco sepulturæ arboribus suspendit." 9 The remark in the text is more correct than the explanation given of it in the note. The configuration of the skull (more particularly with reference to the facial angle) affords a criterion by which the various races of mankind may, with sufficient certainty, be discriminated. conjecture of the principal faculties, physiognomy outlives ourselves, and ends not in our graves. Severe contemplators, observing these lasting relicks, may think them good monuments of persons past, little advantage to future beings; and, considering that power which subdueth all things unto itself, that can resume the scattered atoms, or identify out of any thing, conceive it superfluous to expect a resurrection out of relicks: but the soul subsisting, other matter, clothed with due accidents, may solve the individuality. Yet the saints, we observe, arose from graves and monuments about the holy city. Some think the ancient patriarchs so earnestly desired to lay their bones in Canaan, as hoping to make a part of that resurrection; and, though thirty miles from Mount Calvary, at least to lie in that region which should produce the first fruits of the dead. And if, according to learned conjecture, the bodies of men shall rise where their greatest relicks remain, many are not like to err in the topography of their resurrection, though their bones or bodies be after translated by angels into the field of Ezekiel's vision, or as some will order it, into the valley of judgment, or Jehosaphat.* CHAPTER IV. CHRISTIANS have handsomely glossed the deformity of death by careful consideration of the body, and civil rites which take off brutal terminations: and though they conceived all reparable by a resurrection, cast not off all care of interment. And since the ashes of sacrifices burnt upon the altar of God were carefully carried out by the priests, and deposed in a clean field; since they acknowledged their bodies to be the lodging of Christ, and temples of the Holy Ghost, they devolved not all upon the sufficiency of soul-existence; and therefore with long services and full solemnities, concluded their last exequies, wherein to all distinctions the Greek devotion seems most pathetically ceremonious.† Christian invention hath chiefly driven at rites, which *Tirin. in Ezek. + Rituale Græcum, operâ J. Goar, in officio exequiarum. speak hopes of another life, and hints of a resurrection. And if the ancient Gentiles held not the immortality of their better part, and some subsistence after death, in several rites, customs, actions, and expressions, they contradicted their own opinions: wherein Democritus went high, even to the thought of a resurrection, as scoffingly recorded by Pliny.* What can be more express than the expression of Phocylides? Or who would expect from Lucretius a sentence of Ecclesiastes? Before Plato could speak, the soul had wings in Homer, which fell not, but flew out of the body into the mansions of the dead; who also observed that handsome distinction of Demas and Soma, for the body conjoined to the soul, and body separated from it. Lucian spoke much truth in jest, when he said that part of Hercules which proceeded from Alcmena perished, that from Jupiter remained immortal. Thus Socrates§ was content that his friends should bury his body, so they would not think they buried Socrates; and, regarding only his immortal part, was indifferent to be burnt or buried. From such considerations, Diogenes might contemn sepulture, and, being satisfied that the soul could not perish, grow careless of corporal interment. The Stoicks, who thought the souls of wise men had their habitation about the moon, might make slight account of subterraneous deposition; whereas the Pythagoreans and transcorporating philosophers, who were to be often buried, held great care of their interment. And the Platonicks rejected not a due care of the grave, though they put their ashes to unreasonable expectations, in their tedious term of return and long set revolution. 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 rites requires no rigid reader. That they kindled the pyre aversely, or turning * Similis **** reviviscendi promissa Democrito vanitas, qui non revixit ipse. Quæ (malum) ista dementia est, iterari vitam morte?-Plin. 1. vii. c. 58. † Καὶ τάχα δ' ἐκ γαίης ἐλπίζομεν ἐς φάος ἐλθεῖν λεῖψαν ἀποιχοpévwv, et deinceps. Cedit enim retro de terrâ quod fuit ante in terram, &c.-Lucret. § Plato in Phæd. their face from it, was an handsome symbol of unwilling ministration. That they washed their bones with wine and milk; that the mother wrapped them in linen, and dried them in her bosom, the first fostering part and place of their nourishment; that they opened their eyes towards 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, who 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 churchyards hold not its original from. ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit conjecture. They made use of musick to excite or quiet the affections of their friends, according to different harmonies. But the secret and symbolical hint was the harmonical nature of the soul; which, delivered from the body, went again to enjoy the primitive harmony of heaven, from whence it first descended; which, according to its progress traced by antiquity, came down by Cancer, and ascended by Capri cornus. They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as apprehending their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their gristly bones would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral combustion. That they kindled not fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting fire. And mourning without hope, they had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation, by a common opinion that deep sorrows disturb their ghosts.+ * Vale, vale, nos te ordine quo natura permittet sequamur. |