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rished in popular commotions or in popular massacres. tims of the 10th August were deposited there, and those of the 2d and 3d September, for whom, since the Restoration, a yearly service has been celebrated on the place of their interment. But though these places were not destroyed during the miserable years of the Revolution, the works, there were at a stand. The author of the Promenade aux Cimetières forgot this when he made the following notable remark,-ce fut au moment où les Français se préparaient à la plus cruelle des révolutions; et pendant qu'ils se livraient à toutes les fureurs des factions, ils s'occupaient d'embellir ce monument. Cette réflexion peut-être démontre à certains détracteurs de notre nation que, dans les temps même de leurs plus coupables égaremens, les Français n'avaient point entièrement perdu cette sensibilité douce et touchante qui fit toujours leur caractère distinctif. That sweet and touching sensibility was certainly not employed in ornamenting the catacombs during the Revolution: on the contrary, they were so much neglected that in many places the soil had fallen in, and choked the communications; water came in by filtration, the roof was cracked in many places, and threatened fresh downfalls, and the bones themselves lay in immense heaps, mingled with the rubbish, and blocking up the way. It was not till 1810 that M. de Thury was enabled to pursue his plans, and the workmen then had to make galleries through the bones themselves, which in some places lay above thirty yards thick. It was necessary also to provide for a circulation of air, the atmosphere not having been improved by the quantity of animal remains which had been introduced. The manner in which this was effected is singularly easy. The wells which supplied the houses above with water were sunk below the quarries, and formed in those excavations so many round towers. de Thury merely opened the masonry of these wells, and luted into the opening the upper half of a broken bottle, with the neck outwards: it is only necessary to uncork two, three, or more of these bottles when fresh air is wanted. Channels were made to carry off the water; steps constructed from the lower to the upper excavation, pillars built in good taste to support the dangerous parts of the roof, and the skulls and bones built up along the walls: those which bore marks of disease, or were otherwise remarkable for their formation, were set apart, and arranged in a cabinet. The whole range was then fitted up with ornaments and inscriptions. Among the ornaments is a fountain, in which four golden fish are imprisoned. They appear to have grown in this unnatural situation, but they have not spawned; three of them have retained their brilliant colour, but some spots have appeared upon the fourth, and it

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seems probable that exclusion from light may produce, though more slowly, the same effect upon them that it does upon vegetables. The spring which rises here was discovered by the workmen, the basin was made for their use, and a subterraneous aqueduct carries off the waters. M. de Thury named it at first the Spring of Oblivion,' and inscribed over it these lines of Virgil.

Animæ quibus altera fato

Corpora debentur, Lethai ad fluminis undam

Securos latices et lomga oblivia potant?'

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This inscription has very properly been changed for the most apposite text which could have been found in Scripture:- Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst: but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life. A few exceptionable inscriptions still remain; such perhaps is the mutilated verse of Dante so fine in its proper place.

• Lasciate ogni speranza voi chi entrate.'

Such too are the verses which represent the miserable feelings of Mæcenas, and the wretchedness of that philosophy which has no hope beyond the grave.

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• Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa,

Tuber adstrue gibberum,
Lubricos quate dentes;

Vita dum superest, bene est:

Hanc mihi, vel acutâ

Si sedeam cruce sustine.'

And the lines from the Troas of Seneca.

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The greater part however were well chosen.

The different parts of the Catacombs are named with strange incongruity from the author, or the purport of the inscription which was placed there. Thus there is, in the true French style, the Crypte de la Vérité, the Crypte de la Mort et de L'Eternité, and the Crypte de Néant, the Allée de Job, and the Crypte de Caton, the Crypte de Résurrection, and the Crypte de Fontaine. Virgil, Ovid and Anacreon have each their crypts as well as the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And Hervey, whose Meditations are as popular on the continent as they are among the attendants of the Tabernacle, takes his place with Horace, Malherbes, and Jean Baptiste Rousseau. The album which is kept there is not less characteristic of the French nation,-it contains a great many effusions

effusions of sentiment, a few of devotional feeling, and not a few miserable witticisms, and profligate bravadoes.

But the Parisians, instead of making their quarries a general receptacle for the dead, as they ought to have done, were contented with emptying their cemeteries there. In the year 1790, the National Assembly passed a law prohibiting interment within the churches, and commanding all towns and villages to disuse their old burial-places, and form new ones at a certain distance from the dwellings. During the revolutionary tyranny which soon ensued, when it was proclaimed that there is no God, and that death is eternal sleep, men were buried like dogs, any where and any how, without any ceremony or memorial to mark the spot where they lay. But in the spring of 1800, an arrêté was published by the prefect of the department of the Seine, which ought to have been inserted in the Promenade aux Cimetières. it is curiously characteristic in all respects. The prefect begins by announcing that Les institutions funéraires sont un des premiers besoins de la civilisation. Those, he said, which had fallen into disuse in consequence of the revolution, surrounded the funerals of the rich with splendour, and accorded nothing to the poor but the melancholy emblems of misery and desertion. Those which were in use, treated rich and poor with the same neglect, and public opinion, in consonance with morality, condemned the nakedness of the actual mode of burial. It was worthy of the first city of the republic, to command by its example the decency of interment; and above all to consecrate the care of the burial of the poor as a duty of public piety. Three public cemeteries were to be inclosed for the use of Paris, of a certain extent, and at a distance of one mile from the walls. In the centre of each a Luctuaire, ou Salle de Deuil, was to be erected, destined to receive the funeral procession, and consecrated to the ceremony which might precede the act of interment. Six funeral temples were to be built in Paris, to serve as depots before the funeral. A mode of burial common to all was to be established. The Commune of Paris was to defray the expense for the poor, but in all other cases it was to be reimbursed for the expenses, and consequently was empowered to levy a burial-tax. Families might incur any additional expense that they pleased;-il sera permis de consacrer des souvenirs dans les enclos de la sépulture publique, par des inscriptions, des cénotaphes, et autres monumens funèbres; of course, in such cases, a price was to be paid for the ground. The use of public coffins was forbidden; that is, of those coffins which only served for carrying the body to the grave: for it appears that the bodies were often, perhaps most frequently, interred without one. The cos

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tume of all the persons attached to this department was regulated with as much precision as that of the Directory themselves.

L'ordonnateur principal: habit long, veste et pantalon de drap violet; bottines; manteau court de drap noir; chapeau relevé de trois côtés, et garni d'un plumet noir.

L'ordonnateur particulier: habit, veste et pantalon de drap noir; bottines; manteau court de drap violet: chapeau relevé par devant, et surmonté d'une aigrette violette; la forme du chapeau entourée d'un crépe noir retombant jusqu'à la ceinture; bâton d'ébène, surmonté d'une urne d'ivoire.

Le gardien du dépositoire: habit, veste et pantalon de drap gris foncé; boutons noirs; chapeau relevé par devant.

Les porteurs veste à manches, et pantalon de drap gris foncé ; boutons et paremens noirs; bottines; manteau de drap gris descendant jusqu'au genou; collet et agraffe noirs; chapeau rond entouré d'un crêpe.

L'homme de service du dépositoire: veste è manches et pantalons de drup gris; paremens et boutons noirs; bottines.

Les conducteurs de chars: habit gris, collet, paremens et boutons noirs; gillet et pantalon noirs; bottines; chapeau rond entouré d'un crépe.'

These regulations, apart from the foppery and irreligion which they exhibit, were in themselves good; but, like many laws from the same manufactory, they were in great part disregarded. Mr. Pinkerton, describing the funerals in the cemetery of Montmartre, at this time, says, ' On entering, you see to the left a sandy elevation of the natural soil, declining towards the west. The coffin is let down on the edge of this declivity to a shelf at a small depth, and covered with a few shovels-full of sand. A husband, wife, or relation, gives a parting look, sheds a few tears, and turns away. If the body came from an hospital, it is only inclosed in a sack, and borne by two men on a handbier, over which two half hoops support a linen cloth. Aware of the indecency of this slight inhumation, the sexton will not permit you to go so far as to command a view of the declivity, interspersed with coffins and sacks. But the smell is offended at the distance of forty or fifty yards, if the wind blow from the cemetery.' In 1804 an imperial decree was issued repeating the prohibition of interment in churches, or within the circuit of a town. High ground by this decree was to be chosen for cemeteries, and exposed to the north, and every corpse was to be interred in a separate grave, from a metre and a half to two metres deep, and the earth well trodden down. There was to be a certain distance between the graves, and they might not be re-opened till after five years. Another imperial decree in 1811 consigned the whole funeral business of the metropolis to one undertaker-general, arranged funerals into six classes, and appointed a

tarif whereby the expense of every separate article and assistant was determined; the sum total in either class might not be exceeded; but might be diminished if the family of the deceased chose to strike out any thing in the list. The whole expenses of the first class amount to 4282 franks; of the second to 1800; of the third to 700: the fourth to 250, the fifth to 100, and of the sixth and last only to 16. The tarif will be considered hereafter as singularly precious, if posterity should be as curious concerning the costume of the present age as we are concerning the manners and costumes of our ancestors.

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The tarif may probably be observed; but in spite of the wholesome part of these regulations, the huge common graves are as much in use in the new cemeteries as they were in the old, and the great men of Buonaparte's reign were interred in the crypts of St. Geneviève. But for the new cemeteries. In all other countries the churchyards are only ornamented with crosses, or at most with some tombs, covered also with simple stones, nothing which can recommend them to the curiosity of travellers. But those of Paris strike the stranger with astonishment!' Already in five and twenty years they figure among the most curious establishments of the capital:'-but the same high-flying panegyrist lets out the mortifying fact that already in five and twenty years, many of the best and costliest monuments are fallen to pieces, having, like so many other things in that country, been made for display, and not for duration. He observes that the architects appear to reserve their skill for erecting the habitations of the living, though those habitations are only intended for a time, and tombs are for a portion of eternity. Agreeing therefore with the grave-digger in Hamlet upon this point, he recommends that the police should interfere, and take care that those persons who expend large sums upon what he calls the luxury of tombs should not have the mortification of seeing the monuments which they had erected to pride or to grief, go to ruins in the course of a few years. Some other mortifying facts appear, the bronze and the gilt copper with which the monuments are ornamented attract thieves; and great dogs therefore are kept to guard the burial-grounds. This would happen in the neighbourhood of London, or any great city: but it would hardly happen in the neighbourhood of London that we should have a Guide to the burial-grounds, as a fashionable promenade; that parties would be made to visit them; nor, though grief is proverbially dry, that taverns and drinking-houses should be established close beside them, for the accommodation not only of these parties of pleasure but of the mourners also! The very writer who says that a sensibilité douce et touchante was always the distinguishing

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