withall,
A godly magistrate was he, and major general.
Two troops of hors with him here came, such
Worth his love did crave.
Ten companyes also mourning marcht
To his grave.
Let all that read be sure to keep the faith as
He has don;
With Christ he lives now crowned, his name
Was Humphrey Atherton,
He dyed the 16 of September, 1661.

The following, also, in the graveyard at Attleborough, upon the tablet of the Rev. Peter Thacher, who died in 1785, is no common effort, and in the style of Tate and Brady:

Whom Papists not
With superstitious fire,
Would dare to adore,
We justly may admire.

And another, in the same graveyard, upon the slave, Cæsar, is very clever. The two last lines seem by another hand:

Here lies the best of slaves,
Now turning into dust,
Cæsar, the Ethiopian, craves
A place, among the just.
His faithful soul is fled
To realms of Heavenly light,
And by the blood that Jesus shed,
Is changed from black to white.
January 15, he quitted the stage,
In the 77 year of his age.

An erratum, ever to be regretted, is certainly quite unexpected, on a gravestone. In the graveyard at Norfolk, Va., there is a handsome marble monument, sacred to the memory of Mrs. Margaret, &c., wife of, &c., who died, &c.: “Erratum, for Margaret read Martha.”

In olden time, there was a provost of bonny Dundee, and his name was Dickson. He was a right jolly provost, and seemed resolved to have one good joke beyond the grave. He bequeathed ten pounds, apiece, to three men, remarkable above their fellows, for avarice, and dulness, on condition, that they should join in the composition of his epitaph, in rhyme and metre. They met—the task was terrible—but, Dr. Johnson would have said, what will not a Scotchman undertake, for ten pounds! It need not be long, said one—a line apiece, said the second—shall I begin? said the third. This was objected to, of course; for whoever commenced was relieved from the onus of the rhyme. They drew lots for this vantage ground, and he, who won, after a copious perspiration, produced the following line—

Here lies Dickson, Provost of Dundee.

This was very much admired—brief and sententious—his name, his official station, his death, and the place of his burial were happily compressed in a single line. After severe exertion, the second line was produced:

Here lies Dickson, here lies he.

It was objected, that this was tautological; and that it did not even go so far as the first, which set forth the official character of the deceased. It was said, in reply, by one of the executors, who happened to be present, and who acted as amicus poetæ, that the second line would have been tautological, if it had set forth the official station, which it did not; and that as there had once been a female provost, the last word effectually established the sex of Dickson, which was very important. The third legatee, though he had leave of absence for an hour, and refreshed his spirit, by a ramble on the Frith of Tay, was utterly unable to complete the epitaph. At an adjourned meeting, however, he produced the following line,

Hallelujah! Hallelujee!

There are some beautiful epitaphs in our language—there are half a dozen, perhaps, which are exquisitely so, and I believe there are not many more. I dare not present them here, in juxtaposition with such light matter. Swift’s clever epitaph, on a miser, may more appropriately close this article:

Beneath this verdant hillock lies
Demer, the wealthy and the wise.
His heirs, that he might safely rest,
Have put his carcass in a chest—
The very chest, in which, they say,
His other self, his money, lay.
And if his heirs continue kind
To that dear self he left behind,
I dare believe that four in five
Will think his better half alive.

No. X.

Catacombs, hollows or cavities, according to the etymological import of the word, are, as every one knows, receptacles for the dead. They are found in many countries; the most ancient are those of Egypt and Thebes, which were visited in 1813 and 1818, by Belzoni. Psamatticus was a famous fellow, in his time: he was the founder of the kingdom of Egypt; and, after a siege of nearly three times the length of that at Troy, he captured the city of Azotus. The flight of the house of our lady of Loretto from Jerusalem, in a single night, would have seemed less miraculous to the Egyptians, than the transportation of the sarcophagus of Psamatticus, by a travelling gentleman, from Egypt to London. So it fell out, nevertheless. Belzoni penetrated into one of the pyramids of Ghizeh; he obtained free access to the tombs of the Egyptian kings, at Beban-el-Malook; and brought to England the sarcophagus of Psamatticus, exquisitely wrought of the finest Oriental alabaster. Verily kings have a slender chance, between the worms and the lovers of vertu. “Here lie the remains of G. Belzoni”—these brief words mark the grave of Belzoni himself, at Gato, near Benin in Africa, where he died, in December, 1823, safer in his traveller’s robes, than if surrounded with aught to tempt the hand of avarice or curiosity. The best account of the Egyptian catacombs may be found in Belzoni’s narrative, published in 1820.

The catacombs of Italy are vast caverns, in the via Appia, about three miles from Rome. They were supposed to be the sepulchres of martyrs, and have furnished more capital to priestcraft, for the traffic in relics, than would have accrued, for the purposes of agriculture, to the fortunate discoverer of a whole island of guano. The common opinion is, that they were heathen sepulchres—the puticuli of the ancients. The catacombs of Naples, according to Bishop Burnet, are more magnificent than those of Rome. Catacombs have been found in Syracuse and Catanea, in Sicily, and in Malta.

Jahn, in his Archæologia, sec. 206, speaks of extensive sepulchres, among the Hebrews, otherwise called the everlasting houses; a term of peculiar inapplicability, if we may judge from Maundrell’s account of the shattered and untenantable state, in which they are found. They are all located beyond the cities and villages, to which they belong, that is, beyond their more inhabited parts. The sepulchres of the Hebrew kings were upon Mount Zion. Extensive caverns, natural or artificial, were the common burying-places or catacombs. Gardens and the shade of spreading trees were preferred, by some; these are objectionable, on the ground, suggested in a former number: to alienate the estate and leave the dead, without the right of removal, reserved, is, virtually, a transfer of one’s ancestors—and to remove them may be unpleasant. For this contingency the Greeks and Romans provided, by reducing them to such a portable compass, that a man might carry his grandfather in a quart bottle, and ten generations, in the right line, in a wheelbarrow. Numerous catacombs are to be found in Syria and Palestine. The most beautiful are on the north part of Jerusalem. The entrance into these was down many steps. Some of them consisted of seven apartments, with niches in the walls, for the reception of the dead.

Maundrell, in his travels, page 76, writing of the “grots,” as they were styled, which have been considered the sepulchres of kings,