HISTORY OF THE SKELETON OF
DEATH.

Euthanasia! Euthanasia! an easy death! was the exclamation of Augustus; it was what Antonius Pius enjoyed; and it is that for which every wise man will pray, said Lord Orrery, when perhaps he was contemplating on the close of Swift's life.

The ancients contemplated DEATH without terror, and met it with indifference. It was the only divinity to which they never sacrificed, convinced that no human being could turn aside its stroke. They raised altars to fever, to misfortune, to all the evils of life; for these might change! But though they did not court the presence of death in any shape, they acknowledged its tranquillity; and in the beautiful fables of their allegorical religion, Death was the daughter of Night, and the sister of Sleep; and ever the friend of the unhappy! To the eternal sleep of death they dedicated their sepulchral monu

ments-Eternali Somno*! If the full light of revelation had not yet broken on them, it can hardly be denied that they had some glimpses and a dawn of the life to come, from the many allegorical inventions which describe the transmigration of the soul. A butterfly on the extremity of an extinguished lamp, held up by the messenger of the Gods intently gazing above, implied a dedication of that soul; Love, with a melancholy air, his legs crossed, leaning on an inverted torch, the flame thus naturally extinguishing itself, elegantly denoted the cessation of human life; a rose sculptured on a sarcophagus, or the emblems of epicurean life traced on it, in a skull wreathed by a chaplet of flowers, such as they wore at their convivial meetings, a flask of wine, a patera, and the small bones used as dice; all these symbols were indirect allusions to death, veiling its painful recollections. They did not pollute their imagination with the contents of a charnel-house. The sarcophagi of the ancients rather recall to us the remembrance of the activity of life; for they are sculptured with battles or games, in basso

*

Montfaucon, L'Antiquité Expliquée, I. 362.

relievo; a sort of tender homage paid to the dead, observes Mad. De Staël, with her peculiar refinement of thinking.

It would seem that the Romans had even an aversion to mention death in express terms, for they disguised its very name' by some periphrasis, such as discessit e vita, “he has departed from life;" and they did not say that their friend had died, but that he had lived; vixit! In the old Latin chronicles, and even in the Fadera and other documents of the middle ages, we find the same delicacy about using the fatal word Death, especially when applied to kings and great people. "Transire à Sæculo-Vitam suam mutare -Si quid de eo humanitùs contigerit, &c." I am indebted to Mr. Merivale for this remark. Even among a people less refined, the obtrusive idea of death has been studiously avoided: we are told that when the Emperor of Morocco inquires after any one who has recently died, it is against etiquette to mention the word "death;" the answer is "his destiny is closed?" But this tenderness is only reserved for "the elect" of the Musselmen. A Jew's death is at once plainly expressed, "He is dead, sir! asking your

pardon for mentioning such a contemptible wretch!" i. e. a Jew! A Christian's is described by "The infidel is dead!" or, The cuckold is dead!"

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The artists of antiquity have' so rarely attempted to personify Death, that we have not discovered a single revolting image of this nature in all the works of antiquity *-to conceal its deformity to the eye, as well as to elude its suggestion to the mind, seems to have been an universal feeling, and it accorded with a fundamental principle of ancient art; that of never offering to the eye a distortion of form in the violence of passion, which destroyed the beauty of its representation; such is shown in the Laocoon, where the mouth only opens sufficiently to indicate the suppressed agony of superior humanity, without expressing the loud cry of vulgar

A representation of DEATH by a SKELETON appears among the Egyptians: a custom more singular than barbarous prevailed, of enclosing a skeleton of beautiful workmanship in a small coffin, which the bearer carried round at their entertainments; observing, "after death you will resemble this figure: drink then! and be happy!" a symbol of DEATH in a convivial party was not designed to excite terrific or gloomy ideas.

suffering. Pausanias considered as a personification of death a female figure, whose teeth and nails, long and crooked, were engraven on a coffin of cedar, which enclosed the body of Cypselus; this female was unquestionably only one of the Parca, or the Fates, "watchful to cut the thread of life;" Hesiod describes Atropos indeed as having sharp teeth, and long nails, waiting to tear and devour the dead; but this image was in a barbarous æra. Catullus ventured to personify the Sister-Destinies as three Crones; "but in general," Winkelman observes, "they are portrayed as beautiful virgins, with winged heads, one of whom is always in the attitude of writing on a scroll." Death was a nonentity to the ancient artist. Could he exhibit what represents nothing? Could he animate into action what lies in a state of eternal tranquillity? Elegant images of repose and tender sorrow were all he could invent to indicate the state of death. Even the terms which different nations have bestowed on a burial-place are not associated with emotions of horror. The Greeks called a burying-ground by the soothing term of Cametrion, or, "the sleeping-place;" the Jews, who had no horrors