"Perhaps the most singular phenomenon is, that the bodies seem not to have undergone the smallest decomposition or disorganization. Several medical gentlemen have made a small incision into the arm of the infant; the substance of the body was quite firm, and every part in its original state." To the above remarkable instance we may add the following:—The tomb of Edward the First, who died on the 7th July, 1307, was opened on the 2nd of January, 1770, and after the lapse of 463 years, the body was found not decayed; the flesh on the face was a little wasted, but not putrid.
The body of Canute the Dane, who got possession of England in the year 1017, was found very fresh in the year 1766, by the workmen repairing Winchester Cathedral. In the year 1522, the body of William the Conqueror was found as entire as when first buried, in the Abbey Church of St. Stephen, at Caen; and the body of Matilda, his wife, was found entire in 1502, in the Abbey Church of the Holy Trinity in the same city.
No device of art, however, for the preservation of the remains of the dead, appears equal to the simple process of plunging them over head and ears in peat-moss.
In a manuscript by one Abraham Grey, who lived about the middle of the 16th century, now in the possession of his representative, Mr. Goodbehere Grey, of Old Mills, near Aberdeen, it is stated, that in 1569, three Roman soldiers in the dress of their country, fully equipped with warlike instruments, were dug out of a moss of great extent, called Kazey Moss. When found, after a lapse of probably about fifteen hundred years, they "were quite fresh and plump."
PERFUMES.
So perfect were the Egyptians in the manufacture of perfumes, that some of their ancient ointment, preserved in an alabaster vase in the Museum at Alnwick, still retains a very powerful odour, though it must be between 2,000 and 3,000 years old.
FRENCH ASSIGNATS—THEIR ORIGIN.
Extraordinary devices for raising money are legitimate subjects for our pages. Of these devices, the French Assignats are not the least remarkable. They originated thus—in the year 1789, at the commencement of the great Revolution in France, Talleyrand proposed in the National Assembly a confiscation of all church property to the service of the state. The Abbé Maury opposed this project with great vehemence, but being supported by Mirabeau, it received the sanction of the Assembly by an immense majority on the 2nd of November. The salaries fixed for the priesthood were small, and, moreover, were not sufficiently guaranteed; whence originated much misery to all classes of priests, from the archbishops down to the humble cures; and as monastic institutions were treated in the same way, monks and nuns were suddenly placed in precarious circumstances regarding the means of subsistence. Here, however, an unexpected difficulty sprang up; the National Assembly were willing to sell church property, but buyers were wanting; conscience, prudence, and poverty combined to lessen the number of those willing to purchase; and thus the urgent claims of the treasury could not be satisfied. Applications for loans were not responded to; taxes had been extinguished; voluntary donations had dwindled almost to nothing; and 400,000,000 of livres were necessary for the vast claims of the year 1790. The municipalities of Paris and other cities sought to ameliorate the state of affairs by subscribing for a certain amount of church property, endeavouring to find private purchasers for it, and paying the receipts into the national exchequer. This, however, being but a very partial cure for the enormity of the evils, the National Assembly fell upon the expedient of creating state-paper or bank-notes, to have a forced currency throughout the kingdom. Such was the birth of the memorable assignats. Four hundred millions of this paper were put in circulation; and a decree was passed that church property to that amount should be held answerable for the assignats. Our sketch represents several of the different forms in which the Assignats were issued to the public.
