[18] These instructions were probably ignored; for, when his tomb was opened by the Society of Antiquaries in 1771, those present gazed for a moment on the features of the great victor before they sank into dust. The gold cloth was still folded round the colossal corpse; and the cast in the eyes was distinctly noticeable. The snow-white hair still remained. The coffin was then filled with pitch.—Farrar.
John Zisca, general of the insurgents who took up arms in 1419 against the Emperor Sigismund, seems to have had a like spirit with Edward I. He would revenge the deaths of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who had been cruelly burned at the stake for their religious faith. He defeated the Emperor in several pitched battles, and gave orders that, after his death, they should make a drum out of his skin. The order was most religiously obeyed, and those very remains of the enthusiastic Zisca proved, for many years, fatal to the Emperor, who, with difficulty, in the space of sixteen years, recovered Bohemia, assisted by the forces of Germany. The insurgents were 40,000 in number, and well disciplined.
[19] There is a dim tradition that, much more than a century ago, the tomb under which the two sister-queens—Mary, the Roman Catholic, and Elizabeth, the Protestant, regno consortes et urna—lie side by side had fallen into disrepair, and that a bold Westminster boy crept into the hollow vault, and, through an aperture in the coffin, laid his hand on the heart of the mighty Tudor queen.—Farrar.
[20] The quiet little town of Concord is greatly stirred up over the discovery of a dastardly attempt on Saturday night to rob the last resting place of its noted dead, the grave of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The fact that the grave had been visited by vandals was discovered early Sunday afternoon by a visitor to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the remains are interred. At the head of the grave was a large aperture seven feet in depth and twenty inches wide extending to the box containing the casket.
An alarm was at once given, and the town authorities, together with the Sleepy Hollow Commissioners, made an investigation. The perpetrators of the deed have not been discovered, but the theory is that the attempted vandalism was made some time during Saturday night, and the villains were frightened away by some passing team on the Bedford road just adjacent. Whether the motive was to obtain possession of the remains, or to despoil the casket of its valuable trimmings, is, of course, a matter of conjecture; but the general impression is that the skull was what was most wanted. The wooden box inclosing the casket had decayed somewhat, the interment having taken place over seven years ago, and in the earth which the rascals had thrown out were some pieces of the box. One side of the casket had fallen down a little, but this is attributable to natural decay. Otherwise the casket had not been disturbed or opened.
Mr. Edward W. Emerson, son of Ralph Waldo, arrived home this afternoon, and the investigation of the desecration of his father's grave was immediately entered upon by him with the town authorities. Mr. Emerson has been out of town for two weeks or more, and the first information he had of the affair was that given him upon his arrival this noon. The earth has been replaced, and a watch placed over the grave.
N. Y. Times, Oct. 15, 1889.
[21] It has been suggested that Franklin was helped to his famous epitaph upon himself by Benjamin Woodbridge's funeral elegy upon John Cotton, preserved in Mather's Magnalia:
"A living, breathing Bible; tables where
Best covenants at large engraven were;
Gospel and law in his heart had each its column;
His head an index to the sacred volume;
His very name a title-page; and next
His life a commentary on the text.
O, what a monument of glorious worth,
When in a new edition he comes forth,
Without erratas, may we think he'll be
In leaves and covers of eternity."
[22] Mr. Carlyle may well call it a "characteristic trait" in his favorite Friedrich Wilhelm, as that "wild son of Nature" lay a-dying, that on a certain German hymn which he "much loved" being sung to him, or along with him,—when they came to the words, "Naked I came into the world, and naked shall I go out,"—"No," said he, with vivacity, "not quite naked; I shall have my uniform on." After which the singing went on again with vivacity, akin to that with which the mother of Henri Quatre—not left the world, but brought her son into it; for historians, without romancing, tell us she sung a gay Béarnais song as her brave boy was coming into the world at Pau.