T

that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.*

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.†

Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimæras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, 't is all one to lie in St. Innocent's church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt. Ready to be any thing, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.§

-tabésne cadavera solvat,

An rogus, haud refert.-LUCAN.

Isa. xiv, 16, &c.

Angulus contingentiæ, the least of angles.

In Paris, where bodies soon consume.

§ A stately mausoleum or sepulchral pile, built by Adrianus in Rome, where now standeth the castle of St. Angelo.

END OF HYDRIOTAPHIA.

Brampton Urns.

PARTICULARS

OF SOME URNS FOUND IN BRAMPTON FIELD, FEBRUARY 1667-8.

SECOND EDITION.

CORRECTED FROM THREE MS. COPIES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN

1712.

VOL. III.

2 K

"A Roman Urn drawn with a coal taken out of it,

and found among the burnt bmes, and is now in the possession of Dr. Hans Sloane, to whom this plate is most humbly inscribed."-FIRST EDITION.

Brampton Urns.

I THOUGHT I had taken leave of Urns, when I had some years past given a short account of those found at Walsingham;* but a new discovery being made, I readily obey your commands in a brief description thereof.

In a large arable field, lying between Buxton and Brampton, but belonging to Brampton, and not much more than a furlong from Oxnead park, divers urns were found. A part of the field being designed to be inclosed, the workmen digged a ditch from north to south, and another from east to west, in both which they fell upon divers urns; but earnestly and carelessly digging, they broke all they met with, and finding nothing but ashes and burnt bones, they scattered what they found. Upon notice given unto me, I went myself to observe the same, and to have obtained a whole one; and though I met with two in the side of the ditch, and used all care I could with the workmen, yet they were broken. Some advantage there was from the wet season alone that day, the earth not readily falling from about them, as in the summer. When some were digging the north and south ditch, and others at a good distance the east and west one, those at this latter upon every stroke which was made at the other ditch, heard a hollow sound near to them, as though the ground had been arched, vaulted, or hollow, about them. It

* See Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial: or, a Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk, 8vo. London, printed 1658.

is very probable there are very many urns about this place, for they were found in both ditches, which were one hundred yards from each other; and this very sounding of the earth, which might be caused by hollow vessels in the earth, might make the same probable. There was nothing in them but fragments of burnt bones; not any such implements and extraneous substances as I found in the Walsingham urns: some pieces of skulls and teeth were easily discernable. Some were very large, some small, some had coverings, most none.

Of these pots none were found above three-quarters of a yard in the ground; whereby it appeareth, that in all this time the earth hath little varied its surface, though this ground hath been ploughed to the utmost memory of man. Whereby it may be also conjectured, that this hath never been a wood-land, as some conceive all this open part to have been; for in such places they made no common buryingplaces in old time, except for some special persons in groves: and likewise that there hath been an ancient habitation about these parts; for at Buxton also, not a mile off, urns have been found in my memory; but in their magnitude, figure, colour, posture, &c. there was no small variety; some were large and capacious, able to contain above two gallons, some of a middle, others of a smaller size. The great ones probably belonging to greater persons, or might be family urns, fit to receive the ashes successively of their kindred and relations, and therefore, of these, some had coverings of the same matter, either fitted to them, or a thin flat stone, like a grey slate, laid over them; and therefore also great ones were but thinly found, but others in good number. Some were of large wide mouths, and bellies proportionable, with short necks, and bottoms of three inches diameter, and near an inch thick; some small, with necks like jugs, and about that bigness; the mouths of some few were not round, but after the figure of a circle compressed, not ordinarily to be imitated; though some had small, yet none had pointed bottoms, according to the figures of those which are to be seen in Roma Soteranea, Viginerus, or Mascardus.

In the colours also there was great variety; some were whitish, some blackish, and inclining to a blue, others yellow