Some inscriptions are, perhaps, too simple. In the burying-ground at the corner of Arch and Sixth streets, Philadelphia, and very near that corner, lies a large flat slab, with these words:
“Benjamin and Deborah Franklin,
1790.”
In Exeter, N. H., I once read an epitaph in the graveyard, near the Railroad Depot, in these words:
“Henry’s grave.”
Pope’s epitaph, in the garden of Lord Cobham, at Stow, on his Lordship’s Italian friend, was, doubtless, well-deserved, though savoring of panegyric:
To the memory
of
SIGNOR FIDO,
an Italian of good extraction,
who came into England
not to bite us, like most of his countrymen,
but to gain an honest livelihood.
He hunted not after fame,
yet acquired it.
Regardless of the praise of his friends,
But most sensible of their love,
Though he lived among the great,
He neither learned nor flattered any vice.
He was no bigot,
Though he doubted not the 39 articles.
And, if to follow nature,
And to respect the laws of society
Be philosophy,
He was a perfect philosopher,
A faithful friend,
An agreeable companion,
A loving husband,
Distinguished by a numerous offspring,
All which he lived to see take good courses.
In his old age he retired
To the house of a clergyman, in the country,
Where he finished his earthly race,
And died an honor and an example to the whole species.
Reader
This stone is guiltless of flattery;
For he, to whom it is inscribed,
Was not a man
but a
Greyhound.
No. VI.
It could not have been particularly desirable to be the cook, or the concubine, or the cup-bearer, or the master of the horse, or the chamberlain, or the gentleman usher of a Scythian king, for Herodotus tells us, book 4, page 280, that every one of these functionaries was strangled, upon the body of the dead monarch.
Castellan, in his account of the Turkish Empire, says, that a dying Turk is laid on his back, with his right side towards Mecca, and is thus interred. A chafing-dish is placed in the chamber of death, and perfumes burnt thereon. The Imam reads the thirty-sixth chapter of the Koran. When death has closed the scene, a sabre is laid upon the abdomen, and the next of kin ties up the jaw. The corpse is washed with camphor, wrapped in a white sheet, and laid upon a bier.