over the other, each in the form of a cross, occupied the site of the present town-hall, national-school, &c., close to Westminster Hospital. It was built of rag-stone of Sussex, and with mortar so tempered that no rock could be harder. Attempts were made to blow up part of it with gunpowder, for it was a work of great labour and expense to demolish it. This was effected, however, in the year 1750, when it was proposed to build a new market-house on the site.

In the reign of Henry VIII. all persons guilty of treason were refused any benefit or privilege of Sanctuary. It was forbidden also to those guilty of murder, burglary, highway robbery, or incendiarism.

Edward VI. drew these restrictions still closer; and though Queen Mary temporarily restored the Sanctuary at Westminster to its wonted liberties, still the universal law of progress nullified its use. Law and civilization having taken the place of anarchy and barbarism, this institution of Sanctuary (as had been the case with other usages righteous and requisite in their original enactment) fell into desuetude, being unneeded when law and justice were maintained throughout the land, and deleterious in proportion to its inutility.

And by statute in the first year of James I. the old usage of Sanctuary was totally abolished.

CHAPTER XII.

MOURNING CUSTOMS.

The God who made us gave us tears.

ARDLY more diversified are the nations who

HAR

people the earth, than are the customs and observances used by them to signalize the arrival of the commonest of all visitors, though most awful of all guests, the 'black-veiled king of the dead.' The Jews of old rent their garments and sprinkled dust on their heads, a practice followed to this day in Abyssinia, and observed by a late traveller on the occasion of the death of the esteemed English Consul, Mr. Salt, in Egypt. The practice of tearing the garments is, we are told, commuted by the Jews of these economical days into carefully cutting away a small, and very probably a perfectly insignificant, portion thereof. They bottled their tears also, a custom referred to in the 56th Psalm; and that this practice was customary with the Greeks and Romans, the number of lachrymatories or tear-bottles found among their sepulchral remains sufficiently testifies.

In a 'curiosity shop' at Brighton are many daintilycoloured and variously-shaped minute phials, labelled

'Chinese Tear Bottles.' I have seen such frequently in London, but, being not labelled, I did not recognise their use. To say nothing of the fact that many of them are calculated for a very moderate degree of grief, it puzzled me to guess how even a single tear could be guided to the minute orifice of the smaller ones. I once heard a lady say that her youngest daughter felt so keenly the loss of her sister (then just happily married), that she had cried scores of quarts of tears.' Assuredly no approach to such effluence of weeping is provided for in the Chinese lachrymatories.

This idea has been carried out to the extreme of absurdity in more modern times. A certain Count Schimmelmann, feeling I suppose that a mere phial of tears laid in her tomb would be but a poor token of his esteem for his wife and his despair for her loss, placed her monumental effigy on a spring, which was so arranged by interior mechanism, that the water dropped or spouted constantly from the eye-a token of his enduring grief. It is near Copenhagen, and is known by the name of 'The Weeping Eye' One would think, at a first glance, that the force of folly could no further go, but perhaps we should judge hastily. We read of M. de Brunoi, who put his park in mourning on the death of his mother, and had barrels of ink sent from Paris that the jets d'eau

might be in mourning also. I remember once hearing a very little girl rather gravely reasoned with on the folly of having put her doll in mourning for the cat. I question whether she were more childish than the gentleman who has so peculiarly immortalized his

name.

Whatever may have been the caprices of individuals in mourning for another, they are at least equalled, in frequent instances, by those of the dying themselves. We read of a chaise-driver who desired to be buried as near the high road as possible, for the satisfaction, it is said, of hearing carriages pass; of a fox-hunter who would be buried with a fox-pad in each hand; and of a notorious smoker, who, dying at the age of one hundred and six years, desired that his pipe might be laid in his coffin.

Mrs. Gaskell, in her Life of Charlotte Bronté, speaks of a squire who lived near Haworth, whose great amusement and occupation had been cockfighting. During his last illness he had cocks brought to his chamber to see them fight as he lay in bed. When he became unable to turn to watch the battle, he had looking-glasses so arranged above and around him that he could still see all. And so he died.

Scarcely less childish seems the decree of the English gentleman, Humphrey Morris, Esq., who died at Naples in 1785, and who was buried not only

at a great depth, but in a coffin of cast-iron, fastened with two locks, the keys of which were kept by his executors in England. Those who had nerve to despoil the coffin would not be deterred by the difficulty of a lock or two.

Ludovick Cortusius, an eminent lawyer, died at Padua on the 15th of July, 1518. On his death-bed he forbade his relatives to shed tears at his funeral; ordered musicians, singers, pipers, and fiddlers of all kinds to supply the place of mourners; and appointed twelve maids in green habits to be corpse-bearers, bequeathing them a handsome present. He laid a heavy penalty on his heir should he disobey these orders.

And in 1733 died Mr. John Underwood, of Whittlesea, in Cambridgeshire. Six gentlemen who followed him to the grave sang the last stanza of the 20th Ode of the second book of Horace. No bell tolled, and no relation followed his corpse. His coffin was painted green. Horace was placed under his head, Milton under his feet, a Greek Testament in his right hand, a small Horace in his left. The six gentlemen took supper at his house, and on the removal of the cloth sang the 31st Ode of the first book of Horace. Mr. Underwood left 60ool. to his sister, on the condition of her implicitly following these, his directions.