General Haynau's Corpse.—A most extraordinary account has reached us in a private letter from Vienna to a high personage here, and has been the talk of our salons for the last few days. It appears that the circumstance of the death of General Haynau presented a phenomenon of the most awful kind on record. For many days after death the warmth of life yet lingered in the right arm and left leg of the corpse, which remained limpid and moist, even bleeding slightly when pricked. No delusion, notwithstanding, could be maintained as to the reality of death, for the other parts of the body were completely mortified, and interment became necessary before the two limbs above mentioned had become either stiff or cold. The writer of the letter mentioned that this strange circumstance has produced the greatest awe in the minds of those who witnessed it, and that the emperor had been so impressed with it, that his physicians had forbidden the subject to be alluded to in his presence. Query, Can the above singular statement be verified? It was copied from a French paper, immediately after the decease of General Haynau was known in Paris.
W. W.
Malta.
"Isolated."—This word was not in use at the commencement of the eighteenth century, as is evident from the following expression of Lord Bolingbroke's:
"The events we are witnesses of in the course of the longest life appear to us very often original, unprepared, single, and unrelative; if I may use such a word for want of a better in English. In French, I would say isolés."
The only author quoted by Richardson is Stewart.
R. Cary Barnard.
Malta.
Office of Sexton held by One Family.—The following obituary, copied from the Derbyshire Advertiser of Jan. 27, 1854, contains so extraordinary an account of the holding of the office of sexton by one family, that it may interest some of your readers, and may be difficult to be surpassed.
"On Jan. 23, 1854, aged eighty-six, Mr. Peter Bramwell, sexton of the parish church of Chapel-en-le-Frith. The deceased served the office of sexton forty-three years; Peter Bramwell, his father, fifty years; George Bramwell, his grandfather, thirty-eight years; George Bramwell, his great-grandfather, forty years; Peter Bramwell, his great-great-grandfather, fifty-two years: total 223 years."