DROLL EPITAPH S.

THE following is in St Alban's church-yard, Wood Street,

London :

Hic jacet Tom Shorthose,

Sine tombe, sine sheets, sine riches;

Qui vixit sine gowne,

Sine cloake, sine shirt, sine breeches.

In Herne church-yard, near Canterbury

Here lies a piece of Christ, a star in dust,

A vein of gold, a china dish that must

Be used in heaven, when God shall feed the just.

On Purcell, the celebrated composer, in Westminster Abbey

Here lies Henry Purcell, Esq.,

Who left this life, and is gone to that blest place,
Where only his own harmony can be exceeded.*

On Edward Bond, of Armagh, who ordered L.100 to be given to the poor, instead of a pompous funeral to himself

No marble pomp, no monumental praise;
My tomb this dial, epitaph these lays.

Pride and low mouldering clay but ill agree;
Death levels me to beggars; kings to me.
Alive, instruction was my work each day;
Dead, I persist instruction to convey.

Here, reader, mark-perhaps now in thy prime-
The stealing steps of never-standing time:
Thou'lt be what I am; catch the present hour;
Employ that well, for that's within thy power.

On the Countess of Pembroke, by Ben Jonson

Underneath this marble hearse,
Lies the subject of all verse,

Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother;
Death, ere thou hast killed another,
Learned, and fair, and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee.

* Purcell died November 21, 1695, aged thirty-seven.

On the Earl of Strafford, by John Cleveland

Here lies wise and valiant dust,
Huddled up 'twixt fit and just;
STRAFFORD, who was hurried hence,
"Twixt treason and convenience :
He spent his time here in a mist,
A Papist, yet a Calvinist.

His prince's nearest joy and grief
He had, yet wanted all relief;
The prop and ruin of the state,

The people's violent love and hate,

One in the extremes loved and abhorred.
Riddles lie here, and in a word,

Here lies blood! And let it lie
Speechless still and never cry.

On a dramatist, who was a plagiary and a liar

By Fate despatched without his fill,
Below, the dog is lying still.

In St Leonards, Foster Lane, upon Robert Trappis, gold

smith, 1526

When the bels be merrily roung,

And the masse devoutly soung,

And the meate merrily eaten,

Then sal Robert Trappis, his wiffe, and children, be

forgotten,

Whefor, Jesu, that of Mary sproung,

Let their soulys, thy saints among.

Though it be undeserved on their syde,

Yet, good Lord, let them evermore thy mercy abyde;
And of your charite

For their soulys say a Paternoster and Ave.

In Kinghorn church-yard, Fifeshire, upon the grave-
stone of William Knox of Common, armiger, who died
1677-

Of terrors' king the trophies here you see;
Frail man his days like to a shadow flie;
Or like the path of eagle's wing on high,
That leaves no traces in the distant sky:
Fair as those flowers that fleeting fade away,
So does this life expand-then droop-decay!
But future springs shall renovate the tomb,
And we in gardens of th' Eternal bloom.

On a stone in the ruins of an old church near Broughton
Green, Northamptonshire-

Time was, I stood where thou dost now,
And viewed the dead as thou dost me;
Erelong thou'lt lie as low as I,

And others stand and look on thee.

In Amwell church-yard, Herts-on Mr Thomas Monger, who died August 1773, aged sixty-four

That which a being was, what is it? shew;
That being which it was, it is not now;
To be what 'tis-is not to be, you see;
That which now is not, shall a being be.

The following monument is of a nature to make the heart glad; it exists at Waisley, near Bradford, Wilts :

:

Near this place lie the remains of Jane Sarfen: she spent the greater part of her life in nursing of young children; in which station she behaved with that faithful diligence and tenderness, that her example is highly worthy the imitation of all those who undertake so important a trust.

Elizabeth Oliver, who owes her life to the indefatigable pains and unwearied attendance of this good woman, thinks it her duty to pay this last grateful tribute to her memory.

In the Statistical Account of Scotland, published by Sir John Sinclair, the writer of the notice of the parish of Dunkeld, in alluding to a piece of burial-ground between the cathedral and the street, mentions that it contains no remarkable epitaph. One, however,' says he, 'should be mentioned, which has been frequently repeated as copied from a tombstone there. But though it was composed on the person to whom it relates, and who was an inhabitant of Dunkeld, it was never actually inscribed. One of her descendants is still [1798] alive, who recollects to have seen her, and reports that it was composed by Mr Pennycook.* She died in 1728. It is as follows, more remarkable for whimsical statement of chronological facts, than elegance of poetry :

Stop, passenger, until my life

you read;

The living may get knowledge from the dead.

* A tradesman in Edinburgh, who composed poetry in the style of Allan Ramsay,

Five times five years unwedded was my life;
Five times five years I lived a virtuous wife;
Ten times five years I wept a widow's woes;
Now, tired of human scenes, I here repose.
Betwixt my cradle and my grave were seen
Seven mighty kings of Scotland and a queen : *
Full twice five years the Commonwealth I saw; †
Ten times the subjects rise against the law.
And, which is worse than any civil war,
A king arraigned before the subjects' bar.
Swarms of sectarians, hot with hellish rage,
Cut off his royal head upon the stage.
Twice did I see old Prelacy pulled down,+
And twice the cloak did sink beneath the gown.
I saw the Stewart race thrust out; nay, more,
I saw our country sold for English ore; §
Our numerous nobles, who have famous been,
Sunk to the lowly number of sixteen.
Such desolations in my time have been,
I have an end of all perfection seen.'

THE FREE TRAPPERS.

THE recital of the wild adventures of the American fur traders, given by Washington Irving in his Astoria, was followed up by an equally interesting account of the Adventures of Captain Bonneville, a singular personage, who, with a trusty band of trappers and others, penetrated some years ago into the region of the Rocky Mountains, for the purpose of extending the American fur trade. In the last-named work, we have introduced to us, for the first time, a new order of vagrants, half-trader, half

*These must have been James VI., Charles I., Charles II., James II., William III., Queen Anne, George I., and George II.; which renders it necessary that her age should have been at least three years more than a hundred, in order to reach back to the year 1625, when James VI. ceased to reign.

It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the Commonwealth lasted a comparatively short time. The poet has slumped all the various governments of the interregnum under this title.

In 1638 and 1689.

At the Union, in 1707.

hunter, who have grown out of the system of exploratory journeys in the far west.

66

Formerly, the principal part of the company of travellers consisted of voyageurs or boatmen, and coureurs des bois. A totally different class,' says Mr Irving, 'has now sprung up, "the Mountaineers," traders and trappers, that scale the vast mountain-chains, and pursue their hazardous vocations amidst their wild recesses. They move from place to place on horseback. The equestrian exercises, therefore, in which they are continually engaged; the nature of the countries they traverse; vast plains and mountains, pure and exhilarating in atmospheric qualities; seem to make them physically and mentally a more lively and mercurial race than the fur traders and trappers of former days-the self-vaunting 'men of the north." A man who bestrides a horse, must be essentially different from a man who cowers in a canoe. We find them, accordingly, hardy, lithe, vigorous, and active; extravagant in word, and thought, and deed; heedless of hardship; daring of danger; prodigal of the present, and thoughtless of the future. Accustomed to live in tents, or to bivouac in the open air, he despises the comforts and is impatient of the enjoyments of the loghouse. If his meal is not ready in season, he takes his rifle, hies to the forest or the prairie, shoots his own game, lights his fire, and cooks his repast. With his horse and his rifle, he is independent of the world, and spurns at all its restraints. The very superintendents at the lower posts will not put him to mess with the common men, the hirelings of the establishment, but treat him as something superior.

There is, perhaps, no class of men on the face of the earth who lead a life of more continued exertion, peril, and excitement, and who are more enamoured of their occupations, than the free trappers of the west. No toil, no danger, no privation, can turn the trapper from his pursuit. His passionate excitement at times resembles a mania. In vain may the most vigilant and cruel savages beset his path; in vain may rocks, and precipices, and