The skin which but yesterday fools could adore
For the smoothness it held, or the tint which it wore.
Shall we build to the purple of Pride,

The trappings which dizen the proud?

Alas! they are all laid aside :

And here's neither dress nor adornment allowed,
But the long winding-sheet, and the fringe of the shroud.
To Riches? Alas! 'tis in vain ;
Who hid, in their turns have been hid:
The treasures are squandered again.

And here in the grave are all metals forbid
But the tinsel that shone on the dark coffin-lid.
To the pleasures which Mirth can afford?
The revel, the laugh, and the jeer?

Ah! here is a plentiful board,

But the guests are all mute as their pitiful cheer,
And none but the worm is a reveller here.

Shall we build to Affection and Love?
Ah, no! they have withered and died,

Or fled with the spirit above.

Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side,
Yet none have saluted, and none have replied.

Unto Sorrow? The dead cannot grieve.

Not a sob, not a sigh meets mine ear,

Which compassion itself could relieve!

Ah, sweetly they slumber, nor hope, love, nor fear ;
Peace, peace is the watch-word, the only one here.
Unto Death, to whom monarchs must bow?

Ab, no! for his empire is known,

And here there are trophies enow.

Beneath the cold dead, and around the dark stone,
Are the signs of a sceptre that none may disown.

The first tabernacle to HOPE we will build,

And look for the sleepers around us to rise!

The second to FAITH, which insures it fulfilled;
And the third to the LAMB of the great Sacrifice,

Who bequeathed us them both when he rose to the skies'. *17. 1793.-THE FRENCH INVADED HOLLAND. In 'Butler's Remains,' there is a very humorous

1 See Carlisle's Grammar Schools, vol. ii, p. 880, and the Literary Gazette, Jan. 23, 1819, p. 57, for a specimen of the first production of this interesting young bard.

D

piece of exaggeration respecting Holland, which he describes as

A country that draws fifty foot of water,
In which men live as in the hold of nature;
And when the sea does in upon them break,
And drowns a province, does but spring a leak.

That feed, like cannibals, on other fishes,
And serve their cousin-germans up in dishes.
A land that rides at anchor, and is moored,
In which they do not live, but go aboard.

Marvell, in his Political Poems, thus opens his
battery upon our amphibious neighbour :-
Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,
As but the off-scouring of the British sand;
And so much earth as was contributed
By English pilots, when they heaved the lead;
Or what by the ocean's slow alluvion fell,
Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle-shell.

Glad then, as miners who have found the ore,
They, with mad labour, fished the land to shore;
And dived as desperately for each piece
Of earth, as if it had been of ambergris ;
Collecting anxiously small loads of clay,
Less than what building swallows bear away
Or than those pills which sordid beetles roll
Transfusing into them their dunghill soul.

He goes on in a strain of exquisite hyperbole :-
How did they rivet with gigantic piles

Thorough the centre their new-catched miles;
And to the stake a struggling country bound,

Where barking waves still bait the forced ground;
Building their watʼry Babel far more high

To catch the waves, than those to scale the sky.

Yet still his claim the injured ocean laid,

And oft at leap-frog o'er their steeples played;
As if on purpose it on land had come

To shew them what's their Mare Liberum ;
A dayly deluge over them does boil;
The earth and water play at level-coyl ;
The fish oft-times the burgher dispossessed,
And sat, not as a meat, but as a guest:

1 A Free Ocean.

And oft the Tritons, and the Sea-nymphs, saw
Whole shoals of Dutch served up for cabillau.
Or, as they over the new level ranged,
For pickled herring, pickled Heeren changed.
Nature, it seemed, ashamed of her mistake,
Would throw their land away at duck and drake:
Therefore necessity, that first made kings,
Something like government among them brings:
For as with Pigmies who best kills the crane,
Among the hungry he that treasures grain,
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns,
So rules among the drowned he that drains.
Not who first sees the rising sun, commands;
But who could first discern the rising lands;
Who best could know to pump an earth so leak,
Him they their lord and country's father speak ;
To make a bank was a great plot of state;-
Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate 1.

*17.-FERALIA.

A festival, celebrated by the Romans, in honour of the dead. It continued for eleven days, during which time presents were carried to the graves of the deceased, marriages were forbidden, and the temples of the gods were shut. It was universally believed that the manes of their departed friends came and hovered over their graves, and feasted upon the provisions that the hand of piety and affection had procured for them. Their punishments in the infernal regions were also suspended, and during that time they enjoyed rest and liberty. Ovid thus describes the ceremonies in his Fasti:

Upon a tile a slender offering's made,

On which some scattered corn and salt is laid;
Bread dipt in wine, and violets strewed around,
Which leave upon the consecrated ground 2;

The Indicator, No. VII, vol. i, p. 51.

What is here called consecrated ground, in the original is Mediâ via; because antiently graves were made, and monuments to the me mory of the dead were erected, by the side of the highways; which was a good method of putting the living, as they passed by, in remembrance of their mortality; and for that reason also, Siste Viator, was often the beginning of what was cut upon the tomb-stones.

Let them that will, add better things than these,
But such will the departed ghosts appease;
And when on altars fires begin to blaze,

Let all your voices join in prayer and praise.

18.-SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY.

The institution of this and the two following Sundays cannot be traced higher than the beginning of the sixth or the close of the fifth century. When

the words Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima (seventieth, sixtieth, and fiftieth), were first applied to denote these three Sundays, the season of Lent had generally been extended to a fast of six weeks, that is, thirty-six days, not reckoning the Sundays, which were always celebrated as festivals. At this time also, the Sunday which we call the first Sunday in Lent, was styled simply Quadragesima, or the fortieth, meaning, no doubt, the fortieth day before Easter. Quadragesima was also the name given to the season of Lent, and denoted the quadragesimal or forty days' fast. When the three weeks before Quadragesima ceased to be considered as weeks after the Theophany (or Epiphany), and were appointed to be observed as a time of preparation for Lent, it was perfectly conformable to the ordinary mode of computation to reckon backwards, and, for the sake of even and round numbers, to count by decades.'-(Shepherd.)

*21. TACITA, MUTA, or LALA,

The goddess who presided over silence, among the Romans, had this particular day appointed for her festival; and, if the various enchantments described by Ovid would deliver us from slanderous tongues,' 'malicious lies,' and the 'tattle baskets" of our day, we would be among the first to vote for the revival of this singular feast. The ceremonies are thus

noted in the Fasti :

Lara, afterwards Lala, from the Greek verb λaλsı, to talk much, to babble.

To Tacita the silent rites belong,

And yet the chatt'rer cannot hold her tongue;
Three grains of incense, with three fingers pressed,
Beneath the threshold of the door are placed;
And then, three thrums to a black reel she ties,
With magic words, the thrums of diffrent dies;
While seven black beans she mumbles in her mouth,
A pilchard's head she sews up in a cloth;
A slender needle made of polished brass,
With pitch instead of wax, completes the case;
The case and head into the fire are thrown,
And then some wine is gently poured thereon;
What wine remains the comp'ny drinks with care,
But the old gossip topes the greatest share;
Now have I tied all sland'rous tongues, she cries,
Now are we safe from all malicious lies;
And having said her tittle-tattle say,

With tipsy steps, she tottering reels away.

*21. 1595. REV. R. SOUTHWELL EXECUTED. Poor Southwell (called the English Jesuit) was cast on a stormy epoch, when neither high birth, nor merit, nor innocence, sufficed to save the victims of political and religious contentions. He was of a good family in Norfolk, educated at Douay, and at sixteen entered into the society of Jesuits at Rome. In 1584 he came as a missionary into England, and was domestic chaplain to Anne Countess of Arundel, in which situation he remained till 1592; when, in consequence of some of the violent re-actions of that time, he was apprehended at Uxenden, in Middlesex, and sent a prisoner to the Tower. Here he was confined three years, during which he was cruelly racked ten times, with a view to extort from him a disclosure of certain supposed conspiracies against the government. At the end of this period, he sent an epistle to Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, humbly entreating his lordship, that he might either be brought upon his trial, to answer for himself, or, at least, that his friends might have leave to come and see him. The Treasurer answered, that if he was in such haste to be hanged, he should quickly have