in everything so much; he actually threw | letter of mother's that she wrote to us one it in her face one day that she was a beggar Christmas when she was away; then when she married him. How Gladys Gladys's letters to me written since her would have flared up if she had been the marriage, then Mr. Trelawny's letter about Gladys she used to be! but she isn't. I Gladys. I had thought for a moment of think she has altered a good deal. "I sending that to Gladys, but I burnt it innever had anything but my beauty," she stead; and as I watched its ashes_curl often says in her letters, "and now I and quiver and fly up the chimney, I rehaven't even that for my husband to make membered that Gladys had stood, on one a fuss about. There isn't one of them of her last nights at Colwyn, just where I would love me now, Madeleine, if they stood then, burning old letters, and that I could see my sallaw cheeks." But I don't had seen two of Jem's fly up the chimney believe Gladys has lost her beauty. I just in the same way, and noticed that don't mean to believe it; why, she isn't Gladys was smiling all the time. Why one-and-twenty yet. At any rate, if she should I care if she didn't? Then I found could only get happy it would all come another letter that I had put away in my back. If Gladys could have a child now; desk without thinking. It had come for perhaps she will some day, people gener- Gladys soon after her marriage. It was ally have. I sent her photograph to grand- directed in Gilbert Rennie's handwriting. mother the other day, but Eleanor wrote I sat a long time considering whether I to me she threw the carte into the fire, and should send it to Gladys or not, and at last said it wasn't a picture of Antoinette at I determined that I would; it couldn't matall, that the real Antoinette was dead, and ter to her then, and very likely I thought this was only an impression, and that it there wasn't anything particular in it; becouldn't deceive her. The real Antoi- sides, I had no right to keep it from her. nette, the real Gladys! What have our past selves to do with our present ones? I don't know. What I do know is that Gladys will always be to me the rose that I admire above all flowers. La rose est des fleurs tout l'honneur, I stayed on at Colwyn for a year after My own allowance from Mr. Colwyn dwindled and dwindled; I was very wretched and uncomfortable. At last I took a resolution and went over to see Mrs. Wallingford once when she was visiting at Rhoscolyn, and my talk with her got me the half-teacher's situation at Wemyss, and gave me lodging and board and work for two very happy years. On the afternoon when I was packing up to leave Wales, I took all the relics out of my desk and burnt my treasures, every little scrap of a thing that belonged to my old life-an old diary of Theodora's, a book-marker Gladys had made for me on one of my child birthdays, a Le Blason de la Rose. I have often told you that February is my favorite month of the year, the month of promise, when we feel the first throb of life after winter. The throb of hope I felt on the February day when I said good-bye to dreary, wicked Colwyn, did not deceive me. Oh, Joyce, I had not the faintest idea then what happiness means! I had not seen you and loved you. Life is quite a different thing to me now from what it ever was before. I don't think there can be anything like friendship. I can hardly believe that our life together is going to begin. What times we shall have-from to-morrow! Yes, shut up here. This has been a long night's writing. Actually it is getting light, so I don't think I shall go to bed at all, but begin the preparations we planned. I'm so happy. I suppose I scarcely ought to be when so many people I know had such unhappy lives, and when Gladys is not happy even now. But I simply can't help it. I am so happy, Joyce. happy. I am so very From The Cornhill Magazine. EPITAPHS. THE word epitaph was originally given to that form of monumental inscription by which the surviving relatives sought to commemorate the merits of some departed friend, but universal custom has extended it to anything in the form of a short written memorial of the dead, whether inscribed on a tombstone or not. Looking to its intention, an epitaph must necessarily be short and concise, and cannot by any possibility comprise such details as are appropriate to an elegy, or to such a commemorative poem as Tennyson's "In Memoriam." There is nothing, as we shall afterwards see, to prevent its becoming the vehicle of satire, or even of vindictive remarks. But what is its accepted purpose is shown from the custom of all nations, and is well expressed in the following couplet, taken from a tombstone in a Suffolk churchyard: Tombs have no use, unless it be to show The due respect which friend to friend doth Owe. prayer, to give any expression to the feelings of the survivors. The earliest epitaphs to be found in England were written during the period of the Roman occupation, and commemorate some of the more prominent officers of the Roman legion. The use of Latin, thus commenced, continued, with a slight intermingling of Norman-French after the Conquest, till well down in the Middle Ages, and, in occasional instances, down even to the present day. Indeed, some writers have gone so far as to express the opinion that Latin should be employed exclusively, not only on account of its beauty as a language, but, being one of the dead languages, its meaning can never be subject to those fluctuations and changes which invariably fall to the lot of one in every-day use. But that this opinion is not well founded will be apparent when we consider that epitaphs are intended to be read, not only by the learned, but by the friends and acquaintances of the deceased, and the people at large, who might thereby be stimulated to emulate the virtues of the departed one. As an argument to the contrary, it may be mentioned that the inscriptions in pre-Reformation times, written in Latin, are much more intelligible now than those written in the Old English of the period, which can be read only, and that with extreme difficulty, by some dry-as-dust Old Mortality! The oldest epitaph in English, which is found in a churchyard in Oxfordshire, and dates from the year 1370, to modern readers would be unintelligible, not only from its antique typography, but from its obsolete ianguage, the first two lines of which run as follows, and may be taken as a sample of the whole: "mán com & se how schal alle dede be: wen yow comes bad & bare: noth hav ven we away fare: all ys werines yt ve for care. The chief purpose of an epitaph is to rescue from the sweeping hand of oblivion the memory of some one removed by death who was specially dear to his surviving friends, or whose character and virtues were deemed so worthy of admiration that the recital of them would have the tendency to cause those who read to emulate his example. But, while an inscription on a tomb or statue of one of the world's great ones, would perpetuate his name and fame to future generations, still the perusal of it would not have such a stimulating effect on the great mass, who are not cast in the heroic mould, as one which appeals to the common lot of humanity, wherein, for instance, is recorded the triumph of virtue over adverse surroundings, as in the case of the ancient Greek, of whom nothing is known but what his epitaph records: "Epictetus, who lies here, was a slave and a cripple, poor as the beggar in the proverb, and the favorite of Heaven." On the sarcophagi or coffins of the ancient Egyptians we find the earliest monumental inscriptions in existence, and the Pyramids themselves are believed to be monuments erected in the memory of the departed rulers of that famous land. Those inscriptions which have been deciphered show a great similarity, not only to one another, but to those of the present day. They almost invariably commence with a prayer to the deity (Osiris or Anubis) on behalf of the deceased, which is followed by the name, descent, and position held by him while in life. The difference between them and many modern epitaphs lies in the fact that they do not attempt to delineate the character or merits of the deceased, nor, except in the initial VOL. LXXIII. 3803 LIVING AGE. The inscriptions from the end of the thirteenth century to the time of the Refor. mation are mostly written on brass, and are expressed in the first person singular, as if the deceased was the speaker, wherein he states his rank and attainments while in life, contrasts them with the lowly and loathsome character of his body when laid in the grave, and closes with a prayer that the passer-by might pray for the rest of his soul. In fact, these old tombstones serve as an unimpeachable record of the gradual development of religious thought * Man, come and see how shall all dead be, from one generation to another. Thus, the other, and his son Edward VI., during in 1416, we find the following concluding request on the tomb of a young barrister who died at the early age of twenty-one: Desiring you that this shall see sore The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which was only formally declared to be an article of faith in the Romish Church so recently as 1855, is clearly enunciated on the tombstones as early as the middle of the fifteenth century. As may be supposed, at this period, when the Church held the terrors of Purgatory over | every one, where "every door was barred with gold, and opened but with golden keys," frequent allusion is made to the "adversitie," the 66 outlawry," the pains," and other names for the cleansing fires of Purgatory. But after Henry VIII. broke away from Rome, these allusions, as well as the pious formula" Pray for the soul," gradually disappear, and in half a century afterwards cease almost entirely. Ten years after the rupture, we find the following epitaph, on one Lambe, permeated with the full development of the Reformation doctrine, of immediate immortality through the merits of Christ alone, without priestly or other interven tion: O Lambe of God, whiche sinne didst take away, And (as a lambe) was offered up for sinne; Where I poore Lambe went from the flock astray, Yet thou (good Lorde) vouchsafe thy Lambe to winne Home to thy fold, and hold thy Lambe therein : That at the day when lambes and goats shall sever Of thy choice lambes, Lambe may be one for ever. It must have been rather trying for people in those times to know whether to call themselves Catholics or Protestants, as Henry VIII. was first the one and then his short reign, caused the pendulum of state to swing straight towards Protestantism, only to rebound towards the old faith under his sister Mary, and again to oscillate to Protestantism under Elizabeth. Thus, in 1599, one Edward Grimstone declares that, whatever others did, as for himself he was unchangeable : — By twice two Kings and Queens his life was graced, Yet one religion held from first to last. But, while Roman Catholicism and Protestantism were thus struggling for the mastery, it is surprising to find how the old Pagan mythology finds a place alongside the expression of Christian hope, not only in the Reformation times, but even a century later, as witness the following, on the tomb of a boy who died in the year 1633, aged nine years: Great Jove hath lost his Ganymede, I know, Which made him seek another here below, And findinge none, not one like unto this, Hath ta'ne him hence into eternall bliss. Cease, then, for thy dear Meneleb to weepGod's darlinge was too good for thee to keep; But rather joye in this great favour given, A child is made a saint in heaven. The one just quoted belongs, strange to say, to that stage of English history when a fierce Puritanism was asserting itself, which resulted in the great Civil War, the execution of King Charles I., and the triumph for a time of that strange phase of religious enthusiasm - or, as some would style it, coarse bigotry - under Cromwell and his saints. As may be supposed, the tombstones breathe the spirit of the times in their fierce intolerance and narrow exclusiveness. The following occurs at the close of an inscription in Grey Friars' Churchyard, Edinburgh, under date 1635: In the Church Church tryump I prayed, and now of fulsome flattery is wholly out of place in presence of the awful mystery of death, which, instead of commending itself to the onlooker, arouses his feelings of scorn or derision. Anything, also, of a vindictive or abusive character is most inap. propriate over the remains of those whose "love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished, and who have no more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." What could be more unseemly than the following, bearing date 1600, on a tomb in Babraham, in Cambridgeshire? As may be supposed, epitaphs, in a great measure, reflect also the literary characteristics of the age which produces them. It is during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when our literature was adorned by such a galaxy of brilliant writers, that the literary beauties of the epitaph first begin to show themselves. To define what constitutes a good epitaph is extremely difficult, as each age, not to speak of the individual units who compose that age, has its own standard of taste. The beauty of many a one consists in its extreme simplicity. What could be more startlingly effective than the mere statement of the name of the deceased, the perusal of which immediately recalls to the mind of the passing reader the leading characteristics of his life as emblazoned in the pages of history? Thus, on the tomb of one of Napoleon's generals is engraved the simple name of the deceased, "Massena," which, no doubt, would be well known at the time, but is now comparatively meaningless, except to a few who have made history, and especially the history of the Napoleonic campaigns, a special study. Every traveller to Geneva will recall the unpretentious monument erected to the memory of the famous Protestant divine, John Calvin, consisting of a small stone, not a foot high, with nothing on it but the letters "J. C." Simple, yet striking, as recalling one whose writings have moulded to a great extent the religious thought of nations and individuals down to the present day. But while this extreme simplicity might do in a very few cases, still an epitaph to be generally acceptable must appeal to the general kinship of humanity, and, in addition, should emphasize, in short, crisp language, those special characteristics which distinguished of a deceased grocer: the deceased from the general mass of mankind. It should also deal with him as a mortal not superior to human frailties, but, as committed to the dust, trusting to the divine mercy, and in hopes of a glorious resurrection. Anything in the way Here lyes Horatio Palavicene Who robb'd the Pope to lend the Queene. But while epitaphs usually give all their The calling of a watchmaker naturally suggests itself as suitable for an epitaph, and, accordingly, we find many expressive and appropriate ones. Here is one, or rather the portion of one, on a self-taught watchmaker, who, although we are duly told of his skill as a tradesman, and that "of Berkeley five times mayor this artist was," yet When his own watch was down on the Last He that made watches had not made a key Who in his life was tost on many a wave, but, at the same time, we are glad to learn To heaven he has gone, the way before, To free me from domestic strife, One lady's nurse, a Mrs. Ann Clark, who lived at Tiverton, and died there in or: — 1733, says of herself:. Here Isabel, my wife, doth lie: On helpless babes I did attend But we should form an entirely wrong Whilst I on earth my life did spend. impression if we were to believe that marAnd, as showing how faithfully she carried life as portrayed in the tombstones ried out her appointed lot in life, her epi- were such, even in a small degree, as is taph finishes up with the momentous here satirized. Some of the most beautistatement that "John Bradley was the ful inscriptions we have are by the surfirst child she received into this world in viving spouse, deeply lamenting the 1698, and since above 5000 - which, cal-separation that has been caused by the culating the years in which her service hand of death. What could be more delasted, makes an average of one hundred voted than the following, in memory of and forty-three per annum ! Mrs. Anna and Mrs. Dorothy Freeborne, wives of Mr. Samuel Freeborne, who departed this life, one on the 31st of July, anno 1641; the other August the 20th, anno 1658, one aged thirty-three years, the other forty-four: We do not know whether the size of families among our ancestors, as a rule, resembled those of patriarchal times or not, but it is no uncommon matter to have it recorded that the deceased left behind him fifteen, nineteen, and even more, hopeful children. One good man is described as the forty-first child of his father and as leaving twenty-seven children of his own. Sir William Sutton, who died in 1640, after nine years of married life, was the parent of sixteen children: Under this stone two precious gems do lie, knew them well By long enjoyment. If he thus be prest, Their generous offspring, parents' joy of Were't in my choice that either of the twain heart, Eight of each sex: of each an equal part Might be returned to me to enjoy again, While olive plants seemed to have flour-Yet here's my comfort, herein lies my hope, ished in those days, Bluebeard also seems The time a coming cabinets shall ope to have had several worthy representa- Which are lockt fast: then shall I see tives. For example :— My jewels to my joy, my jewels me. Here lies old Mr. Richard Tully, So shall the tenth when she doth die. Surely, since he was so very much married, he found more pleasure in his married life than many others who have erected monuments and inscribed epitaphs | in memory of their departed partners in life, such as they who wrote: Or one more, as follows: "In memory of |