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bring myself to express any opinion that would disturb this arrangement; but for several reasons which I shall offer, I am strongly inclined to doubt the propriety of so classing it, and I think it far more likely that it belongs to Egfrid, the son of Offa, king of Mercia.

This coin appears rather too elegant for the seventh century, and seems to have been struck when a considerable degree of improvement had taken place in the coinage, for which improvement the reign of Offa was most remarkable, as his coins are the best executed of all those of the Heptarchy.

The letters LV on the reverse, (for the X seems rather to be a cross,) probably denoted the moneyer's name, as the word LVL for LVLLA is found on the coins both of Offa and Coenwulf; besides, the cross, according to Speed, was the ensign of Mercia, and the highly-ornamented one on the reverse of this coin is not unlike that on several of Offa's coins. To these arguments may be added that, as I have before observed, the word Rex occurs on all the coins of Mercia, but does not appear on any of the earliest coins of Northumberland.

ETHELRED I. A. D. 774.—In a former letter I expressed an opinion that the sceatta, noticed by Mr. Woolston belonged to Northumberland; if this conjecture should be right, it is most probable it belongs to this prince, who began his reign in 774, was dethroned in 779, and was afterwards restored in 794. I am also strongly inclined to think that a few of the Stycas attributed to Ethelred II. 836, belong to this prince, particularly Nos. 28, 29, and 36 of Pl. 10, and the styca in App. Pl. 27, as we find the word Rex wanting on them, as it is on all the early coins of Northumberland, whilst, on the contrary, it occurs on the stycas of Eanred and almost all the subsequent ones, those of Osberht and those we are now considering, forming, I believe, the only exceptions, and on those of Osberht we generally find the letter R for Rex. This opinion derivés, I think, additional strength from the name Eanbald, which we meet with on No. 29, and which was probably intended for Eanbald I. or II. who were Archbishops of York from 780 to 812, neither of whose names could occur on the coins of Ethelred 11. It will also be remarked,

that all these, except No. 36, begin the name of the prince with an A.

EARDULF.-Ruding does not appear to have noticed those stycas which have Eardulf on both sides, probably conceiving them to bear only the name of a moneyer of Eanred or Ethelred. Pinkerton has classed them with the kings, but has given them the date 910; and Mr. Woolston has followed him, and put them at the end of the stycas, I know not on what authority, as I cannot find any such king of that date. I should much rather suppose they belong to Eardulf, who began to reign in 796. All those of Eardulf I have seen, appear to have the name on both sides, but want the word Rex; the letters, and the manner in which they were struck, seem very different from those of Eanred or Ethelred.

I here conclude my observations on such of the Heptarchic coins as have been already classed and assigned to the different kingdoms. In a future letter I purpose offering some remarks on the sceattas published in Ruding, a subject certainly of the greatest difficulty, and which I never should have attempted to undertake but for the purpose of inducing others of more experience to investigate the matter. Yours, &c. JOHN LINDSAY.

Mr. URBAN,

THE

April 3. HERE is perhaps no part of the history of human manners more singular, than that which regards the funeral rites and memorials of barbarous and pagan nations. Trifling as such particulars may appear to the general observer, the slightest facts which reflect light upon ancient and widelyspread customs, have still their value. They present us with a page in the history of human nature, and often incidentally develope the combinations of varied passion. Amidst the vast diversity which here crowd upon our observation, there are several customs which seem reasonably traceable to those natural emotions and wishes which are excited by death in the minds ofthe survivors; to the poignancy of sorrow, and the warmth of affection; some owe their origin to an extravagant admiration of departed worth; in others we mark the strong influence of religious prejudice or philosophical theory, or perhaps the wanderings of imagination in the fields of poetical allegory. Sometimes also they furnish

us with striking coincidences in opi nion and practice between the most remote nations, which are either so general as to mark the wide operation of certain principles and passions, or so minute as to illustrate the original identity of nations, and the uniform preservation of ancient tradition. Lastly, there are some customs of this class so peculiar and extravagant, that it is extremely difficult to reduce them to any more satisfactory causes than man's vain and wanton caprice, or the senseless corruptions of rustic ignorance.

My present purpose is to throw into one view a few of the more remarkable of these phenomena.

1. It is well known that the ancient Greeks and Romans attached the highest importance to the due performance of the obsequies of their departed friends, and that the souls of the unburied were believed to wander for the space of an hundred years upon the disconsolate banks of the Siyx. The Hindoos also (who speak of a river of fire to be crossed by the disembodied spirit, and are accustomed to place a piece of money in the mouth of the corpse,) declare that the souls of those who remain unburied, wander as evil deities through the earth. In conformity with such prejudices, where the exequies could not be strictly performed, certain ceremonies by way of substitution were allowed. It is notorious, from the testimony of Horace and other writers, that three handfuls of soft earth thrown upon the body, were considered effectual for this purpose; and we know that Andromache, in Virgil, raised an empty sepulchre to the memory of Hector. But similar customs are also observed in the remote kingdom of Tonquin. Father Marini relates that," when any friend is dead, and his body is no where to be found, they write his name on a piece of board, and perform the same funeral solemnities to that representation of him, as if it were his real corpse."

In the third Æneid, v. 67, 68, particular ceremonies are specified, by which the souls of the dead were in vited to the sepulchres, and made, as it were, inhabitants of them, "animamque sepulchro condimus." So in Ausonius, "voce ciere animas funeris instar habet." Now it is curious that, according to Father Tissanier's account of Tonquin, a king of that country having made choice of a magnificent

house for the reception of his father's soul, formally purchased it, and then after setting forth a rich repast, with four profound bows, he requested the spirit to accept of his new habitation. Accordingly, a statue, representing the soul, upon which the King's name was written, was conveyed thither with great pomp, and to conclude the ceremony, this palace with all its costly. furniture was set fire to, and consumed. Another traveller relates, that the Japanese, upon a yearly festival, visit the tombs, where they have familiar intercourse with the dead, whom they invite to follow them back to the city. To this the souls consent, but after two days sojourn among the living, they are driven back to the tombs by a great shower of stones; for any further continuance of their visit would be esteemed highly unfortunate. In these practices we may readily trace a belief in the immortality and immateriality of the human soul, mingled with a confused notion of its partiality to the body, and its subserviency to human influence.

Another instance of extraordinary care bestowed upon the rites of burial, may be found in the custom prevalent both in ancient Greece and modern Scotland, of preparing the shroud of a sick or aged person even long before the approach of death. Although this anxiety may not be very easily accounted for upon principles of reason, it may be acknowledged as the natural result of the affection of ignorant persons, attaching identity to the body instead of the soul. Hence also the custom common among pagan nations, of lacing food beside the tombs of the deceased, which was in some cases carried so far, that provisions were let down by a pipe into the grave, and sometimes were even applied to the mouth of the dead person. An Ethiopian nation, according to Herodotus, preserved the bodies of their relations enclosed in coffins made of a sort of glass.

Strangely mingled with these marks of affection, are symptoms of a superstitious dread of the relics of the departed. The touch of a corpse was, and is now in many parts of the world, thought to impart a pollution which much time and ceremony alone could cleanse. The Kings of some countries were not allowed even to behold one, and the Pontifex Maximus of Rome was, according to Se

neca*, laid under the same restraint. The Hindoos, we are assured, consider carcasses as evil deities, and the bodies of those who die under an unfortunate constellation, are carried out of the house, not by the door, but through a hole made in the wall, and the house is deserted for a considerable time. This last peculiar custom is, according to Kolbens, general among the Hottentots, who carry out a corpse through a hole in the back of the hut; for they imagine, he adds, that the dead are mischievously inclined to injure the cattle confined in the midst of the village. Lastly, the Kamschadales frequently desert the hut in which a relation has breathed his last, and carefully throw away all the clothes which he used in lifet.

When we consider the splendid obsequies and expensive mausolea so common in most ages and countries, the solicitude so generally manifested to ensure the rites of burial, and the frequent practice of deifying the departed, it may appear abstractedly improbable that any nations are to be found by whom these marks of respect are neglected; yet instances of such disrespect are discoverable even in civilized regions. In Mexico, Mr. Bullock observed no memorials of the dead; neither monuments nor inscriptions appear to be in use. In Switzerland also, though funerals are conducted with becoming solemnity, no service is read over the grave. Among ruder nations may be perceived marks of a studied and even contemptuous disrespect. The ancient Troglodytæ, as Diodorus relates, were in the habit of covering the bodies of their relations with a shower of stones, accompanying

this unceremonious treatment with

peals of laughter. Whether this point may be illustrated by the conduct of that people who were said to lament at every birth, and to rejoice at funerals, from an opinion of the misery of human life, it is difficult to say. The classical writer above cited, speaks also of an Ethiopian tribe who abandon their dead upon the coast, below lowwater mark, from the express desire that they may become food for fishes. The inhabitants of Radack, an island in the Pacific Ocean, act, according to

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Captain Kotzebue, in a similar manner. Yet more strange is the usage of the Kamschadales, who regularly, we are told, deliver up their dead as food for dogs, and this not from intentional neglect, but because they think it a means of procuring fine dogs for their spirits in the other world, and that the evil powers, who are the authors of death, may be satisfied with seeing the bodies abandoned without the houses.

The Gaures or Guebres of the East, are well known to abandon the remains of their friends, in uncovered enclosures, to the birds which live upon carrion. The same practice prevails in Tibet, where these receptacles have covered passages below to admit the beasts of prey: some bodies are thrown into a river, but burial is quite unknown. The inhabitants of the parts near the Pontus Euxinus were, we are told, in ancient times so monstrous, as to devour the bodies of their deceased parents; and the Balearic islanders used to cut them to pieces, and place the mutilated fragments in earthen pots.

It were endless, however, to enumerate the extravagancies with which the funeral rites of barbarous nations are replete. The very follies of men may become instructive, not only because such relations extend our knowledge of the human mind, and consequently of ourselves, but because they may induce us more highly to value those blessings of pure Religion and general improvement, which have delivered us from their debasing influence. Yours, &c. A. R. C.

Mr. URBAN,

April 10. THE Poly-Olbion of Drayton as perhaps one of the most singular performances the ingenuity of a poet ever devised. He appears to have intended to make it the great repository of whatever was connected with the land of Britain, its history, antiquities, religion, natural history, and geography; its customs and manners, and romantic legends: and this, as far as the poem goes, he has accomplished with a minuteness and accuracy, rather to be expected from the prose folios of one whose life had been devoted to science, and the graver studies of literature, than from the pen of a votary of the Muses.

Hist. Kams.

Yet great and elaborate as is the work, and correct and interesting as are its details, it has never, and from its very nature can never, become popular, or be read with pleasure as a poem. There is nothing more opposed to the genius of poetry, than a minuteness and continuity of detail. Like the bee which sips not at every flower in regular progression, but flies as its fancy dictates, poetry must not be bound down or encumbered with a weight of particularity and enumeration: it must be free and wandering, and deal in generalities, or it ceases to be poetry. Had Byron, in his fourth Canto of Child Harold, instead of selecting some of the most striking objects in his beautiful descriptions of Rome or Venice, attempted a complete and detailed account of their temples or statues, even his mighty genius would have failed to make his verse less tedious or less prosaic than the greater part of the Poly-Olbion. This is the great, the staring fault of Drayton. He gives you the name and particulars of every king, from the first landing of Brutus; of every saint from Joseph of Arimathea; the property of almost every known herb or tree; of every stone, beast, fish, or fowl: add to this prolixity, the unharmoniousness and monotony of the measure he has chosen, and it will require but little discernment to account for the neglect which as a poem it has met with. Yet Drayton was a poet in the strictest sense, and superior to most, if not all his immediate contemporaries. His Nymphida is a gem that has not its equal for sportive fancy and imaginative beauty in the whole circle of our poetry. Many of the poems in his Muse's Elysium, partake of the same character; and detached pieces abound in the Poly-Olbion, of the highest beauty and poetic feeling indeed there is scarcely one of his compositions from which something could not be culled, indicative of his talents and his taste.

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Drayton was the poet of the country and of nature, and to this, in great measure, is owing his superiority over those of his times. He is comparatively free from cold metaphorical subtilties, and the worn-out pedantry of the Grecian Mythology. He abandoned the thick fogs and lay-stall of the city, and betook himself to the temple and fields of the Muse, to delightful groves and pleasant downs,

where are harmless shepherds, some exercising their pipes, some singing roundelays to their grazing flocks *. He mixed in the sports of the hamlet, mingled with the jokes of its rustic inhabitants, and listened to their traditions and legendary tales. He followed the huntsman and his hounds in the field, and the falconer and his hawk by the river. The habits and notes of the feathered tribe from the wren to the eagle, and the virtues and properties of plants from the thistle to the pine-tree, were alike the objects of his attention. Nor did he, in his devotedness to rural simplicity and truth, forget the severer studies which a work on such a plan would necessarily require. The old chronicle and book of science, the monkish and minstrel legend were pondered, and many a long hour must have been spent in extracting from these sources the flood of learning and research, apparent in every page of his poem. This overflowing of ancient lore, this fidelity of detail, has rendered the Poly-Olbion one of the most interesting monuments in our language to the literary and general antiquary, and to him it will always be a store of pleasure and delight; there is still, however, something wanting to complete his satisfaction, and that is a well and ably-written commentary. What the learned Selden has written is excellent, yet even his notes are not numerous enough, and they are far from including the whole poem. But where is the man, at the present day, who will undertake to compose a commentary to the PolyOlbion that shall be perfect, or even approach perfection?

In the preface to his poem, Drayton ranks among the causes which make him fearful of its success, the want of a prior model. It is true there is no other poem in English on the same plan, but still the claim of complete originality is not, I think, quite clear. Compositions both in verse and prose, of a somewhat similar nature, were not at all uncommon in the middle ages, only the plan was not confined to a particular country, but embraced the universe. Such, for instance, is the poem L'Image du Monde, of Gautier de Metz; in prose the Speculum Historiale of Vincent de Beauvais, and the popular work of our coun

Preface to the Reader.

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N the area of Wellclose-square, is a Church which was built for the King of Denmark, by Caius Gabriel Cibber, the well-known sculptor of the maniacs formerly in Moor-fields. Its obscure situation renders it but little noticed at this day, or I feel certain it would not have fallen into the disgrace which it at present has.

Your readers will, I am sure, be equally surprised with myself, at hearing that this edifice is converted into a meeting-house for a society of enthu siasts calling themselves the Bethel Union, and they will be the more grieved when they read the description of the edifice. The exterior shows merely a plain brick building, with a small steeple at the west end. The west front is adorned with statues of the Christian virtues. Charity, with its accompanying infants, is placed upon the cornice of the doorway, Faith and Hope occupying niches at the sides of it. There are two Latin inscriptions on this part, setting forth the erection and dedication of the building. The interior, however, is very pleasing; its decorations and ornaments are in the best taste of the seventeenth century, and are executed in a style of elegance and profusion not surpassed by any building of the kind in the metropolis. It resembles the primitive Churches in having a circular tribune at the east end, behind the altar screen, leaving a vacancy above it, which has a far better appearance than where it is placed against a wall. It is a fine composition of the Corinthian order, and beautifully carved; in the centre is a large painting, representing the agony in the Garden. On each side of this, upon pedestals, are full-length statues the size of life, of our Saviour and Moses, and on the cornice St. Peter and St. Paul, of smaller proportions. The table is supported by elegant open work in brass, and is covered with crimson velvet. At the west end are two galleries richly carved. In the upper is the case of an organ, the instrument having been removed. The pulpit, which is situated against the north wall, is polygonal, each face being embellished with a carving in relief from the history of our Lord.

Opposite to it is a large pew, glazed and finished with a canopied roof, once appropriated to Royalty. The ceiling is richly worked in stucco, the centre rising into an elegant dome. A stone font stands in a pew near the altar. The royal arms of Denmark, and the cypher of the founder (Christian), is seen in several parts of the edifice. Upon the whole, a degree of richness and splendour are visible throughout the building, met with in few modern Churches. When I advert to the present appropriation of the edifice, I feel certain your readers will participate with me in the feelings of indignation which arose when I witnessed its degradation. The altar-table serves as a depository for hats, and the statues of our Saviour and Moses are rendered ridiculous by having blue flags stuck into their hands, inscribed with the word " Bethel," like those carried by benefit societies, and at other processions of a similar stamp. A model of a ship is suspended from the western galleries, and on the outside of the Church a mast with shrouds and tacking is stuck upon the roof. It would be needless to add more upon the conduct of a party which could offer so great an indignity to the statue of our Saviour as that I have just noticed, nor will it be necessary for any feelings of execration against such conduct; the bare recital of the facts themselves are suffi`cient. After the service, as it is called, had ended, and the congregation had deposited their offerings in the shape of pence and halfpence, in certain tin boxes, which though less musical, as effectually proclaimed the pharasaical mode of alms-giving, as a trumpet would have done, some men with fiddles and clarionets struck up a tune, in which they were vocally accompanied by several others, with voices so devoid of grace and harmony, that I was only restrained from a laugh by the consideration that the building had once been sacred, and the feelings of indignation which arose from witnessing its present state.

Is the Danish Ambassador cognisant of the appropriation of the building? I can scarce believe that the King of Denmark would ever have suffered a Chapel built by one of his predecessors on the throne to be thus degraded. If Royalty, however, should display an unworthy apathy on the occasion, those great bodies, the Com

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