ages. Nous declarons ta femme, veuve; tes enfans orphelins; et nous t'envoyons, au nom du diable aux quatre coins du monde.

JUVENAL, Quinctilian, and Martial have agreed to refuse Cicero the least reputation as a poet:

Carmina quod scribis Musis et Apolline nullo

Laudari debes: hoc Ciceronis habes.

MARTIAL: Lib. 11. epig. 89.

Juvenal has not only ridiculed his pretensions, but even quoted an unlucky verse, which is said to have escaped him in a moment of exultation, immediately after he had quelled the conspiracy of Cataline :

O fortunatam natam me consule Romam,

a line, which for tameness and insipidity, cannot be paralleled by any thing except a translation of it by Martignac, which admirably preserves both :

O Rome fortunée

Sous mor consulat née.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

THE following anecdote of More, while he was Lord Chancellor, is transmitted to us on unquestionable authority. A person, who had a suit in chancery, sent him two silver flaggons, not doubting the present would be very agreeable, and probably influence the ultimate determination of his cause, On receiving them, More told one of his servants aloud, to fill them with the best wine in his cellar, and turning round, to the bearer of the treacherous present, "Tell your master," replied the inflexible magistrate, "that if he approves my wine, I beg he would not spare it.”

ECLOGUES.

ANCIENT Writers of eclogues frequently introduce their shepherds playing verses with their pipes. This circumstance, though very obscure, is not noticed by the commentators, which I have seen. The poets represent their swains as playing not only the tune but the very words, as when Virgil says, Eclogue 8,

Incipe Moenalios mecum, mea tibia, versus.

and when in his first eclogue he introduces a shepherd play. ing on his pipe, who is said to make the woods resound with the name of his mistress :

Formosam doces resonare Amaryllida sylvas.

This difficulty can be obviated only by supposing that the words were first sung and then the tune played. From one passage in the fifth eclogue it should seem that the two employments were sometimes separated.

Boni quoniam convenimus ambo

Tu calamos inflare leves, ego dicere versus.

THE USE OF REPUTATION.

FR. Accoltus Arrezzo, a celebrated lawyer in the fifteenth century, with the assistance of his servant, purloined several pieces of meat from a neighbouring butcher's shop. Two of his scholars, of doubtful character, were put in prison as authors of this theft. Accoltus in vain accused himself: it was not doubted but he did it to rescue the young men. When the affair was forgotten, and the students punished and liberated, Accoltus brought positive proof that he had been the thief. On being asked what could have induced him to commit an action so unworthy of him, and of which no one would have presumed to suspect him, he replied, that he did it in order to place in a strong light the advantages of a well-established character.

FOR THE ANTHOLOGY.

ON BURIAL GROUNDS.*

facilis jactura sepulchri est.

THE Customs of nations are various in their origin, as they are diversified in their character. Many owe their first adoption to necessity, many to accident, many to prejudice and caprice. The manner in which we dispose of the bodies of the dead, is influenced rather by a combination of these causes, than by either of them alone. Convenience prompts the speedy removal of our deceased fellow-creatures from sight, while prejudice of various kinds usually regulates the peculiar kind

* We willingly gratify an ingenious friend by inserting this essay, though it is feared his ideas will not, in the present state of things, meet with general assent.

ED.

of treatment allotted them. An association of the feelings and sensibility of the living, with the condition of the dead; a belief that the lifeless body is really susceptible of benefit or inju ry; and a fearful reluctance at departing from habits consecrated by long usage; are the motives with which we consign to earth the remains of our fellows, and preserve from violation the ground in which they are deposited. Such an ascendancy have scruples of this nature gained over most minds, that the neglect or infringement of the prevailing custom must be attended with a degree of odium, no less than results from unqualified sacrilege.

When we analyze the principles which lead to the inviolate preservation of burial grounds, but few of them are found to depend on the base of reason and philosophy. On the contrary, our hereditary scruples and prejudices constitute almost the whole ground on which the custom is supported. Of what advantage is it to be able to mark the spot where an individual mouldered into dust, and became incorporate with the mass of earth which envelops him? Or what is the precise time during which it is necessary and expedient that such a spot should be discriminated from territory less sacred? A 'few years, or possibly centuries, constitute the longest period, in which our ordinary repositories of the dead will be acknowledged or held in reverence as such; or during which our tombstones will hold any claim on the mercy of our descen dants. A slight convulsion of nature, a war, a fire, or any publick calamity; even a change of men and manners; may obliterate forever from the minds of posterity the spot which confines the earthly part of their progenitors. Where are now the ashes of statesmen and warriors, who two thousand years ago were entombed with all the rites and solemnities of enthusiastick superstition? Have they been changed and dissolved during the lapse of ages, and blended by percolating fluids with the surrounding mass of earth? Has the forest, which waved over their heads, penetrated with its roots into their silent abodes, and fed its luxuriant boughs on the richness of their fluids? Has the slow process of petrifaction invaded their habitations and tinged with their disorganized remains some shapeless extent of rock? Or have their ashes been disturbed, perhaps scattered to the winds by the hands of their unconscious posterity. These are inquiries which involve the probable fate which every inhumed body must

sooner or later experience. They shew that the time will arrive when those particles which constituted the human fabrick at the moment of its dissolution, will not be susceptible of distinction from those which have occupied a sphere less eminent in the range of material beings. Is it then a thing of consequence whether these changes take place in ten years or in ten centuries? Or do we gain any thing by procrastinating for a few years events which in the ordinary course of things are inevitable ?

In the whole circle of organized beings a constant revolution takes place. The plant which springs from the earth after attaining its growth, and propagating its species, falls to the ground, and by decomposition contributes its remains to the nourishment of plants around it. The animal which ranges the woods and mountains, dies on the surface of the earth, and if not devoured by his own kind, enriches for vegetation the place which receives his remains. Were it not for this law the soil would soon be exhausted, the earth's surface would become a barren waste, and the whole race of organized beings for want of sustenance would become extinct. Man alone instigated by convenience, or impelled by custom, attempts to wrest his fellow from the general fate, and exempt him from the routine of nature. But his efforts though they may be partially successful, will not often avail to deprive of their due support the humble weed or disgusting insect, which are fated to survive. Whether the human body be inclosed in the ground, or dissipated on the funeral pyre; whether the earth or air be made the receptacle of its more destructible portion; a thousand species of the vegetable or animal kingdoms are ready to surfeit on the banquet thus afforded them. Why then should we attempt to modify or impede the propensities of nature any farther than the health or convenience of living individuals is immediately concerned? A few years are sufficient to reduce the human structure to a state incapable of injurious influence on survivors. When such a period has elapsed, what should prevent us from appropriating the ground that has been occupied as a place of sepulture to the purposes of building of streets, or of agriculture? To a philosophick mind there is nothing horrible in the idea that "our mouldering bodies will nourish the growth of a cabbage or a tulip." In this way we should exhibit a form less disgusting, and thus become a second time useful to society. Nay, after custom

YOL. X.

13

should have done away the terrours of innovation, the imagination would here find a luxuriant feast. In fancy's eye we should behold our departed friends rising from their graves, and recognize their characters in the tree or plant which sprung from their remains. The palm is emblematical of victory, the myrtle of love, the olive of peace, and the laurel of literary precedence. In the sturdy oak or majestick elm, our statesmen and heroes would reassert their pristine eminence; while our matrons and maidens would awake our tender recollection in the modest hyacinth or chaste mimosa. The midnight assassin, and the destroyer of innocence would exert their malignity toward their species a second time in the baneful hemlock, or deadly aconite; while their officious friend, the equitable Jack Ketch, would rise at their side in his characteristick hemp, and wave his fibrous branches insultingly round their head.

When Cicero saw a man ploughing over the grave of his father, he abserved, Hoc est vere sepulchrum patris colere. Could it be considered an evidence of respect or veneration to appropriate the repositories of the dead to the most advantageous and ornamental purposes, the consequent benefits would be of no inferior kind. These valuable and central portions of ground which in all our cities lie useless and unimproved, instead of their present loathsome and melancholy aspect, would exhibit the marks of elegance and of use. The feelings and prejudices on the subject which now exist, would gradually be softened and changed; at least so far as the advancement of reason and discernment may be anticipated over that of ill grounded bias and inveterate errour.

From the London Universal Magazine.

A HISTORICAL AND SUMMARY VIEW OF THE CIRCULATION OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURES.

THE original writings which came immediately from the the pens of the apostles, much more the autographs of the Jewish historians and prophets, have, many centuries ago, been lost through the lapse of time. But, besides the publicity and permanence given to the law of Moses by its being read in the synagogues every sabbath day; and to the books of the New Testament by their being read, from the earliest ages, in Christian assemblies, the nature and importance of