The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon

bards, elevated like beacons on their widely-separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age to age."*
    I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It was the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectly unconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into further conversation, but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or whether it was another of those old day-dreams to which I am subject, I have never, to this moment, been able to discover.

      * Thorow earth and waters deepe,
            The pen by skill doth passe:
        And featly nyps the worldes abuse,
            And shoes us in a glasse,
        The vertu and the vice
            Of every wight alyve;
        The honey comb that bee doth make
            Is not so sweet in hyve,
        As are the golden leves
            That drops from poet's head!
        Which doth surmount our common talke
            As farre as dross doth lead.
                                     Churchyard.

RURAL FUNERALS.
    Here's a few flowers! but about midnight more:

        The herbs that have oil them cold dew o' the night
        Are strewings fitt'st for graves——
        You were as flowers now withered; even so
        These herblets shall, which we upon you strow.
                                                CYMBELINE.
    AMONG the beautiful and simple-hearted customs of rural life which still linger in some parts of England are those of strewing flowers before the funerals and planting them at the graves of departed friends. These, it is said, are the remains of some of the rites of the primitive Church; but they are of still higher antiquity, having been observed among the Greeks and Romans, and frequently mentioned by their writers, and were no doubt the spontaneous tributes of unlettered affection, originating long before art had tasked itself to modulate sorrow into song or story it on the monument. They are now only to be met with in the most distant and retired places of the kingdom, where fashion and innovation have not been able to throng in and trample out all the curious and interesting traces of the olden time.
    In Glamorganshire, we are told, the bed whereon the corpse lies is covered with flowers, a custom alluded to in one of the wild and plaintive ditties of Ophelia:
    White his shroud as the mountain snow,

            Larded all with sweet flowers;
        Which be-wept to the grave did go,
            With true love showers.
    There is also a most delicate and beautiful rite observed in some of the remote villages of the south at the funeral of a female who has died young and unmarried. A chaplet of white flowers is borne before the corpse by a young girl nearest in age, size, and resemblance, and is afterwards hung up in the church over the accustomed seat of the deceased. These chaplets are sometimes made of white paper, in imitation of flowers, and inside of them is generally a pair of white gloves. They are intended as emblems of the purity of the deceased, and the crown of glory which she has received in heaven.
    In some parts of the country, also, the dead are carried to the grave with the singing of psalms and hymns—a kind of triumph, "to show," says Bourne, "that they have finished their course with joy, and are become conquerors." This, I am informed, is observed in some of the northern counties, particularly in Northumberland, and it has a pleasing, though melancholy effect to hear of a still evening in some lonely country scene the mournful melody of a funeral dirge swelling from a distance, and to see the train slowly moving along the landscape.

        Thus, thus, and thus, we compass round
        Thy harmless and unhaunted ground,
        And as we sing thy dirge, we will,
                              The daffodill
        And other flowers lay upon
        The altar of our love, thy stone.
                                          HERRICK.
    There is also a solemn respect paid by the traveller to the passing funeral in these sequestered places; for such spectacles, occurring among the quiet abodes