Fosbroke says: (( A rector of Bibury used to preach two hours, turning his hour-glass to obtain the required time. After the text the squire of the parish withdrew, smoked his pipe, and returned to receive the blessing." The following is a very appropriate motto for an hour-glass. I have seen it sculptured under one on a tomb-stone : "Souls go through death's narrow pass Like lots of sand through hour-glass." In St. Sepulchre's church is a monument to John Smith, Governor of Virginia, buried 1631; and there is the finest pulpit (mahogany) sounding board in London; it is in the shape of a parabolic reflector, twelve feet in diameter. In the church of St. Catherine, Leadenhall-street, Dr. Pearson first delivered his lectures on the creed: he died in 1686. Dr. Benjamin Stone was turned out of this church in the time of Cromwell: he was not, from his sentiments, deemed fit to hold his office. He was at first confined in Crosby Hall, then removed to Plymouth, and, after paying £60, was restored in 1660. In Christ's church, Newgate-street, the celebrated Whittington, thrice mayor of London, founded a library in 1429. Richard Baxter, the celebrated non-conformist divine, preached here. He was fined by Judge Jefferies five hundred marks, and was to be imprisoned in the King's Bench till it was paid: he was imprisoned eighteen months. In Saint Dionysius's church, Fenchurch-street, there are two old syringes. They were used before fire-engines were invented: they are about 21 feet long, and were strapped to the persons who used them. In All-Hallows' church, Thames-street, was buried Dr. Litchfield in 1447. After his death there were found 3083 sermons in his hand-writing. The communion-table is a marble slab, supported by a kneeling figure. In St. Lawrence's church, Jewry, is a very fine glazed screen, and the handsomest vestry-room in London. All-Hallows, Lombard-street, from being surrounded by other buildings, is called "the invisible church." Here is a handsome carved oak altar-piece, surmounted by seven candlesticks, typical of the seven churches: the columns are fluted, and in each flute is a string of vine leaves and ears of wheat. In the upper part of the lobby is a small curtain carved in wood, which seems to hide some foliage behind: it is well executed. In St. Stephen's church, Wallbrook, which is Wren's masterpiece, is a fine painting, by the American West, of the stoning of St. Stephen. In St. Martin's, Ludgate Hill, around the font is a Greek palindrome inscription; the letters will read either backward or forward, and mean, "Cleanse thy sins, not merely thy outward self." It was frequent in the Greek churches. It is found in the front of the Basilica at Constantinople, in several English churches, at Dulwich College, and in France.* In St. Helen's church, Bishopgate, is a poor-box supported by a curiously carved mendicant asking alms. These are common to all the churches. written an appropriate couplet for them: Wordsworth has "Give all thou hast; High Heaven rejects the lore The inexorable tax-gatherer has so drained the pocket, that they are become nearly useless: they are now the residence of the crafty spider, where he passes the winter solstice in sullen, silent, sacred security, undisturbed by the gentle drop of the widows' mite. Aubrey, in 1678, says: "Poor-boxes were, mation, often in inns as well as churches." before the refor "The poor man's box is there too; if ye find anything SPANISH CURATE, 1647. In some of the London churches there are bachelor's pews. The galleries in churches seemed to have originated in the desire to separate the sexes-sometimes the men being above and sometimes below. "Lord, how delightful 'tis to see A whole assembly worship thee." A very singular circumstance happened at the church of St. Andrew, (under shaft,) in London, in the year 1701. A young Jewess was converted here; after her baptism her father-De Breta, a merchant-turned her our of doors, which was the occasion of an act of parliament being passed, compelling Jews to provide for their Protestant children.† *The following is one in Latin: "SUBI DURA A RUDIBUS "—" from difficulties pleasures ensue." I expect the act has been a dead letter: but there are a few conversions occasionally taking place. I find in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xv., 1841, that there are eight converted Israelites now church-of-England clergymen; and that the Rev. H. S. Joseph has, at Liverpool, a regular weekly service in Hebrew, and had sixteen Jewish communicants in his congregation. In the sixteenth volume there is an account of the Rev. Michael Solomon being consecrated the first church-of-England bishop of Jerusalem : he was originally an Israelite. This church was one of the earliest pewed, (in 1520,) where, as Gay had noticed in another place, "A prude, at noon and evening prayer, As if she watched her soaring soul." Between the windows there are a regular series of paintings of the twelve apostles, executed 1726. To show the increasing application of cast iron, there was erected, about twenty years past, in a fashionable village near Liverpool, a church all of this metal, from within two feet of the ground to the roof-even the very pinnacles and battlements of the lofty tower; it is lined inside with brick. Its dimensions are one hundred and nineteen feet long, forty-seven feet broad, and the tower ninety-six feet high. Americans visiting England would find a perambulation of the churches highly instructive; appealing strongly to their warm imaginations, interesting to the kindliest feelings of the heart, and full of information and instruction to the mind. The monuments alone will remind them that there lie the remains of many of their ancestors who once were great and noble; -And the nobleness that lies In other men, sleeping, but never dead, FUNERALS, TOMBS, &c. "Lo! as the surpliced train draws near The slow sad bell, the sable bier, In holy musings wrap the mind." MALLET. On this subject the historian cannot help but observe many changes after the reformation. Kenelm Digby informs us, "In the middle ages, in cities, there were no monuments of decoration which correspond with the heathen philosophy, no pantheons, columns, statues of kings, or triumphal arches. "If at the funerals of great nobles or kings there was a more magnificent pageant, it was always ecclesiastical, always monastic-never secular or military." Montaigne says, "If I were a composer of books, I would It compose a register of different deaths, with a commentary; for whoever could teach man how to die, would teach them how to live." It is the most remarkable action of human life. is the master-day, the day that judges all the rest.* What amusement and instruction may be found in a churchyard, to "Stoop o'er the place of graves, and softly sway The sighing herbage by the gleaming stone; May think of gentle souls that's passed away Sent forth from heaven among the sons of men, And gone into the boundless heaven again." BRyant. Brown, a writer on urn burials, states that "the cemetral cells of ancient Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories.” In the account of the funeral of Faire Veliera, 1598, “the corpse was, with funeral pompe, conveyede to the churche in a hearse, and there solemnely entered, nothing omitted which necessite or custome would claime; a sermon, a banquette, and like decorations." "The carrying of ivy, laurel, rosemary, or yew," says Bourne, " is an emblem of the soul's immortality; bay and rosemary usually chosen-the bay, as is said, survives from the root when apparently dead, and the latter from its supposed virtue in strengthening the memory: the graves were bound over with plants that would take root and afford it protection." The first public military funeral in England was Sir Philip Sydney's, who was mortally wounded at the battle of Zutphen in 1586. The first naval one was the Earl of Sandwich's, who was killed in Solebay fight in 1672. The following is a short account of Oliver Cromwell's funeral in Westminster Abbey, which was attended with great pomp, and but little reconcileable to republican notions: "The walls were hung with two hundred and forty escutcheons; 'the splendid sorrows that did adorn the hearse' were twenty-six large embossed shields and twenty-four smaller, with crowns; sixty badges, with his crest; thirty-six scrolls, with mottoes; his effigy carved and superbly arrayed; a velvet pall, which contained eighty yards. Not long after this event his grave was rifled, with the same rabid demoniacal desecration by the royalists as was ever done on any occasion by the fanatical * Mores Catholici. Puritans: his body hung in chains, and his head 'exposed to the peltings of the pitiless storm' for twenty years." App. xviii. In 1666 an act was passed, ordering the bodies of all, whether male or female, to be buried in nothing but woollen. As woollen was the chief manufactory, this may be said to be a politic act. There was a five pound penalty, if not complied with. Before that time women in particular were frequently buried arrayed in their most sumptuous apparel, and adorned in their sepulchre with the most glittering ornaments they possessed. The fanciful and not inelegant shroud was, after this, mostly used, and generally with part of it richly ornamented (by punches) hanging out at the foot of the coffin. How careful has mankind ever been, and how curious and various have been the ways taken, to preserve the remains of those we love. We read that Moses, when he departed from Egypt, took with him the bones of Joseph; and, except there is something really immoral, actually producing evil consequences, we ought to judge these efforts with the greatest charity and liberality, without regarding our own taste; the voice of nature will consent, whether the voice of man does so or not. "Absent or dead, still let our friends be dear; A sigh the absent claim, the dead a tear." The mole-like grubbings of late years in England have brought forth some curious ancient relics, which have excited our wonder and surprise. A corpse was discovered, in 1835, buried in a log of wood; the log seemed to have been sawed down the centre, and a vacancy scooped out of the middle where the body was placed: it was sewed up in skins, with every appearance of having been the corpse of some one of the natives before the Roman invasion, perhaps two thousand years past. There is a tomb rudely sculptured, at Dewsbury, in Yorkshire, of one block of stone, resembling a small house, evidently of the Saxon age. In the old churches the graves do not seem to have been very deep. The thick slab which covers the body serves also as a floor to walk upon. Some of the oldest gravestones are in the form of a cross. Bodies have been found in coffins of clay, three inches thick, dove-tailed together like carpenters' work, and then baked. Lead coffins were in use in the Saxon age. St. Dunstan was buried first in a leaden coffin enclosed in an oaken one, which was covered with one of lead, and then banded with iron. Coffins of lead were often in the shape of the body, closely fitting it, and exhibiting a cast of the head outside, as a bust. |