and the birds P. A just judgment, that he who had persecuted the Holy Church with a rancour that could not be appeased, should in his burial be joined with these.

But now, brethren, let us turn to ourselves, and, under

creepers which trailed over it. Here he found a rude couch with a pillow, on which he reclined, and, in preparation for death by his own hand, ordered his followers to dig a grave of exactly his own size. While this was being done, a slave of Phaon's found his way to the pit, bearing a despatch to the effect that Nero had been adjudged a public enemy by the Senate, and that search was being made for him, that he might be punished after the manner of the olden times. "And what manner is that?" said the fallen emperor. He was told that the criminal was to be stripped naked, and his neck being inserted into a fork, to which his hands were to be tied, he was thus to be scourged to death. Hereupon he took out two daggers, and felt their edges, but again shrunk back with terror, and returned them to their sheaths, observing that the fatal moment had not yet arrived. The trampling of horses outside seems at length to have given him the nerve he required for the act of suicide. With the assistance of his secretary Epaphroditus, he plunged a dagger into his throat. Immediately afterwards a centurion who was in quest of him burst into the cave. Nero's horse, startled on the road by an offensive smell from a corpse, had caused the fall of the handkerchief with which his rider's face was muffled, and had discovered the emperor to a prætorian who had left the service, and happened then to be passing. The consequence was a speedy pursuit. The centurion, perhaps wishing to disguise his purpose of apprehending Nero, perhaps desirous that such a monster should die by the hands of justice, applied the tattered cloak to the wound in his throat, by way of stanching the blood. "Too late!” cried the dying profligate, and then, glaring at the centurion, as a Roman soldier who owed him, and had vowed to him, allegiance, he gasped out, "And this is your fidelity!" with which words he expired, his eyes protruding from their sockets in a deathstare very dreadful to behold. As to his sepulchre, it may seem to a medieval theologian, like our Herbert, very proper to “ point a moral and adorn a tale," by making out that it was the maw of wolves, and the crop of birds; but unfortunately this was not the fact. Nero had made it a special request to his attendants that they would see his body secured from maltreatment and reduced to ashes. This was done with the connivance of the party in power; and the ashes, collected by his two nurses and his concubine Acte, and wrapped in a state-robe worn by him on New Year's Day, of white inwoven with gold, were committed with great pomp and lavish expenditure to the family sepulchre of the Domitii, of which the Campus Martius commanded a view, and where they occupied a porphyry sarcophagus, surmounted by an altar of Carrara marble. Of Nero, as of Dives, it is recorded that "he was buried,"-that funeral honours were paid to him after death,- —a mocking and ghastly satire upon that "awakening unto shame and everlasting contempt," which awaits those who have set at defiance the laws of nature, of reason, of man, and of God.

et sub tanti doctoris et advocati patrocinio. de nostra reconsciliatione confidimus (sic). Agamus penitentiam. fugiamus falsitatem. inhereamus veritati; Redemptor et salvator filius dei. ipse est judex noster mediator dei et hominum homo Christus ihesus. qui cum patre et spiritu sancto vivit et regnat deus per omnia sæcula sæculorum.

AMEN.

• Sub tanti doctoris et advocati patrocinio,—“under the shadow of the patronage of so great a doctor and advocate." This most objectionable language is only an echo of that employed in the Collects of the Sarum Missal for the Commemoration of St. Paul (June 30) and for Sexagesima Sunday, (on which last day the Apostle's own account of his manifold labours and sufferings, as given in 2 Cor. xi. 19 et seq., is appointed for the Epistle.)

The first of these Collects is as follows; Deus, qui multitudinem gentium beati Pauli apostoli tui prædicatione docuisti; da nobis, quæsumus, ut cujus natalitia colimus, ejus apud te patrocinia sentiamus. Per Dominum.

O God, who by the preaching of Thy blessed Apostle St. Paul hast taught a multitude of nations; grant unto us, we beseech Thee, that we who are to-day celebrating his entrance upon everlasting life, may feel the benefits of his pa tronage and advocacy with Thee. Through the Lord.

the shadow of the patronage of so great a doctor and advocate, let us have confidence in our own reconciliation. Let us do penance; let us flee from falsehood; let us cleave unto the Truth. Our Redeemer and Saviour is the Son of God. He is our Judge, who is also the mediator of God and men, the man Christ 1 Tim. Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Ghost liveth ii. 5. and reigneth God for ever and ever.

Amen.

That for Sexagesima Sunday, which our Reformers have most wisely and rightly expurgated, ran as follows; Deus, qui conspicis quia ex nulla nostra actione confidimus; concede propitius, ut contra omnia adversa doctoris gentium protectione muniamur. Per.

O God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do; mercifully grant that by the protection of the teacher of the Gentiles we may be defended against all adversity. Through.

I

a

*

f. 234 b. mariæ pauca præstringamus a de prosapia. "ortu. et vita. de conceptu et partu. et de his quæ in col

col. 2.

* præstringamus. It is probable that here Herbert meant the præ to indicate that this notice of the Virgin's lineage, &c., was by way of exordium to his sermon. But in the classical use of the verb this meaning of the præ scarcely appears at all. The word means simply 'to graze,'

'touch the surface of.'

b See page 86, note o, in which is given a list of the seven Festivals of the Virgin observed in the medieval Church. of five of these only does the Church of England take any notice, providing services for the Purification (Feb. 2), and the Annunciation (March 25), and retaining in the Calendar, as Black Letter days, the Visitation (July 2), commemorating her visit to Elizabeth, the Nativity (Sept. 8), and the Conception (Dec. 8). The Visitation is, of course, a Scriptural incident, and one of great significance, which therefore there can be no objection to commemorate. The Conception and the Nativity of the mother of our Lord may be regarded as a kind of dawn of His own incarnation; and on that ground alone the names of these festivals are retained in the Calendar, though no sanction is hereby given to the fables and false doctrines connected with the events commemorated. It is not, be it observed, the immaculate conception of the Virgin, but only her conception, which we are reminded of on the 8th of December. The observance of this festival did not become general in the West till the fifteenth century; but the feast of the Virgin's Nativity was observed much earlier, the institution being ascribed to Pope Sergius, A. D. 695. The fact that the Assumption (Aug. 15) and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple (Nov. 21), are excluded from our Black Letter days, is sufficient to shew that the revision and expurgation of the Calendar, which took place at the Reformation, was conducted with great care and judgment, and that no trace of anything essentially connected with superstition and false doctrine was allowed to remain in it.

XII.

A SERMON

ON THE ASSUMPTION OF THE MOST BLESSED VIRGIN MARY".

BEING about to speak of the Assumption of the most blessed Virgin Mary, let us first run over a few points concerning her genealogy, lineage, and life, concerning

Of the festival of the Assumption, which is celebrated Aug. 15, Alban Butler says; "It is a traditionally pious belief that the body of the blessed Virgin was raised by God soon after her death, and assumed to glory, by a singular privilege, before the general resurrection of the dead." But he adds in a note; "That this historical tradition and pious belief or opinion is no article of faith, is proved by Baronius and others." The first author in point of date whom Butler refers to as an authority for the fact of the Assumption, is Gregory of Tours, who died in his cathedral city in 595. He wrote a work in eight books on the Lives of the Saints, but it has been so interpolated, that it is very difficult to say with certainty of any part of it, that it is to be attributed to him. Gregory of Tours was a cotemporary of Gregory the Great (A.D. 540-604), and in Gregory's Sacramentary we find the first liturgical notice of this festival for the eighteenth of the kalends of September. The collect for the day in this Sacramentary, which is also that appointed in the Missal of Sarum, is as follows;

Veneranda nobis, Domine, hujus diei festivitas opem conferat sempiternam, in qua sancta Dei genitrix mortem subiit temporalem, nec tamen mortis nexibus deprimi potuit; quæ Filium tuum Dominum nostrum de se genuit incarnatum. Qui tecum.

May the solemn festival of this day, O Lord, be the means of conferring upon us everlasting aid, on which the holy Mother of God underwent temporal death, and yet could not be holden by the bonds of death, who brought forth Thy Son our Lord incarnate of her substance. Who with Thee, &c.

It is curious to observe how learned Roman Catholics of the good oldfashioned school speak of this festival with a certain reserve, as, for instance, Alban Butler, who, after exhorting his readers "to receive with