lisks to the memory of deceased kings and princes were also very generally erected with inscriptions, which, for the most part, have now by lapse of time become illegible. Some, however, have been deciphered which date from the first introduction of Christianity amongst these Northern nations. Mr. Madden, in his "Shrines and Sepulchres of the Old and New World," observes, that the type of our earliest rude ponderous unwrought stones, cromlechs, cairns, and barrows is to be found in Scandinavian remains. Many of the earliest inscriptions that have been discovered are in the so-called Runic characters, and belong, in the opinion of many antiquarians, partly to the Pagan, and partly to the early Christian period.

Of the huge stones, cairns, and cromlechs existing in Great Britain and Ireland at the present day, it has been thought by some they were erected as sepulchral monuments, several of which originally bore inscriptions, stating the name and rank of the deceased. Epitaphs, properly so called, are rarely met with in England previous to the eleventh century. These are written in the Latin language, and chiefly on priests and royal personages. After the time of William the Conqueror, they appear to have been written in Norman-French, till the sixteenth century, when the English language began to be commonly used, from which time to the present it may be truly said they too often consist of fulsome compliments and expressions of

respect which were never applied to the deceased while in life. Hence our English proverb, “He lies like an epitaph," and the French, "Menteur comme une epitaphe." Many on our church walls and in our burial grounds are, to use the somewhat coarse language of Pope, "sepulchral lies," the shame as well as derision of all honest men. The deceased, if judged by such fulsome panegyrics, were possessed of every virtue, perfect and as free from sin as the very angels of heaven.

But we have also, as opposed to these, epitaphs of a revengeful satirical kind, condemning the deceased, and setting at naught the old admonition that we should say nothing but what is good of the dead. Not a few, too, may be met with of use to the historian, the biographer, and the lawyer, which may be termed historical epitaphs; as that of Sir Thomas More, which is in itself a brief biography of the great chancellor— or that of Nicholas Wootten, a man notable in his day, on whose tomb we find a complete history of his various preferments and embassies; but long biographical epitaphs have now become very rare. Epitaphs reflecting upon the ladies and connubial bliss are not a few-one in Wales, whilst showing a romantic but prevalent custom of planting flowers on the grave, seems to speak unfavourably of the married state:

"This spot is the sweetest I've seen in my life,
For it raises my flowers and covers my wife."

Many examples might be given in which the trade, profession, or some peculiar eccentricity is noticed, satirised and ridiculed; and others of a humorous description, as if written to excite laughter and merriment. These, with their punning words and attempts at wit, may be vulgar and unfeeling enough, but still more so are those which play upon the disease or mode of death of the defunct, as that in one of the Cheltenham churchyards:

"Here lie I and my three daughters,

All from drinking the Cheltenham waters:
While if we had kept to the Epsom salts

We should not now be in these here vaults."

Or that effusion on a locomotive, which appeared in the pages of one of our most facetious periodicals, "Written by the sole survivor of a deplorable accident (no blame to be attached to any servants of the company),

"Collisions four

Or five she bore,

The signals were in vain;

Grown old and rusted,

Her biler busted,

And smashed the excursion train.

Her end was pieces."

Or that in Norwood Cemetery, on a tombstone:

"Poor old Granny."

The propensity for writing punning epitaphs existed at a very early period. The inscription on the tombstone of Pausanias, the Greek physician, contains a pun on his name. The first two lines have been thus translated:

"Pausanias, not so named without a cause,

Who oft to pain has given a pause."

The Romans do not appear to have indulged much in epitaphs of this description, but punning inscriptions in Latin of later times are very common; for the most part they are scarcely worth translating; and with many it is impossible to reproduce the pun in English. In the early part of the seventeenth century tombs seem to have been thought the proper place not only for puns, but for anagrams, acrostics, chronograms, Irish Bulls, and similar monstrosities, in the very worst taste-written as if meant solely to excite ridicule and laughter, instead of inspiring us with reverence and respect for the memory of the dead.

In most churchyards may be read the miserable doggrel which tells of

"Afflictions sore long time I bore,

Physicians were in vain,

Till death gave ease, as God was please,

To ease me of my pain."

Whilst regretting the frequency of epitaphs of this

description, which bad grammar, bad diction, and

worse thoughts unite to render rather ludicrous than instructive, it must be mentioned we have others of a far different kind, striking exceptions to that execrable taste too much witnessed in many English churchyards, in which are fully accomplished the threefold object of an epitaph, “commemoration of the deadcomfort to the mourners, and a lesson for the reader;" in which "the tomb of a good man supplies the want of his presence, and veneration for his memory produces the same effect as the observation of his life, which sets virtue in the strongest light, and exalts the reader's ideas and rouses his emulation," in which he is reminded of his own mortality, and of the vanity and emptiness of all things human, together with a pious admonition and a humble expression of Christian confidence in immortality. That there are so many epitaphs in our churchyards which are bad, and so few that are good, may perhaps be attributed to the fact that almost every person thinks himself able to write an epitaph.

"The tendency of the present day," says Mr. Jacobs in an admirable paper on epitaphs, "seems to be to do away with epitaphs properly so called, and merely to inscribe on the grave the name and age of the deceased, with the addition sometimes of a verse from the Bible. This is certainly preferable to the exhibitions of vulgarity and bad taste which a stroll in most of our churchyards and cemeteries will disclose. Let us hope, however, that a time may come when epitaphs