Should to its reckoning fleet. On th' other side Unmatch'd by mortals. In the foremost rank As reapers in some rich man's field mow down The squadrons, and like wolves their rage; with joy There present; from on high the deities EDWARD, EARL OF DERBY, born 1799, died 1869. Now rose Aurora from Tithonus' bed, The midmost, thence to shout to either side, Or to the tents of Ajax Telamon, Or of Achilles, who at each extreme, Confiding in their strength, had moor'd their ships. Atrides, loudly shouting, call'd the Greeks h; Forthwith they order'd, each his charioteer, In rev'rence held; Antenor's three brave sons, And, heav'nly fair, the youthful Acamas. In front was seen the broad circumference His burnish'd arms like Jove's own lightning flash'd. The rival bands of reapers mow the swathe, Barley or wheat: and fast the trusses fall; So Greeks and Trojans mow'd th' opposing ranks; But still made even head; while those, like wolves, Urn-Burial. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. [SIR THOMAS BROWNE, a learned physician of the seventeenth century, was born in London in 1605. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, took his degree of Doctor of Medicine at Leyden, and settled at Norwich as a physician in 1636. His two great works are "Religio Medici," and "Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors." He wrote also many tracts. A complete edition of his works, including his Life and Correspondence, was edited by Mr Wilkin in 1835. He was knighted by Charles the Second in 1671, and died in 1682. Sir Thomas Browne was not only one of the most learned writers of his time, but his style is singularly powerful and idiomatic. It is commonly held that Dr Johnson, who wrote his life, founded his own style upon that of this remarkable writer; but although the Latin forms prevail to a great extent in each, it seems to us that there is a striking difference between the balanced periods of Johnson and the rush and crowding of the thoughts of Browne. His discourse on "Urn-Burial," from which the follow. ing is an extract, was occasioned by the discovery of some ancient sepulchral urns in Norfolk. The passage which we give is the fifth and concluding chap. ter of this most original production.] Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard underground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests: what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relics, or might not gladly say "Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim ?”* Time, which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments. In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation, and obscurity their protection. If they died by violent hands, and were thrust into their urns, these bones became considerable, and some old philosophers would honour them, whose souls they considered most pure, which were thus snatched from their bodies, and to retain a stronger propension unto them; whereas they weariedly left a languishing corpse, and with faint desires of reunion. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, and make but one blot with infants. If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live with death, and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah were work for Archimedes: common counters sum up the life of Moses his man. Our days become considerable, like petty sums, by minute accumulations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers; and our days of a span long make not one little finger. If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity into it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice makes us the sport of death, when * The line is from the second Elegy of the third book of Tibullus, where ne dwells on the rites which will attend his funeral, and wishes that his obsequies might be so performed. even David grew politically cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena's nights, and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish itself, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond the malcontent of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity; content to have so far been, as to have a title to future being, although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an abortion. What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and councillors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes which, in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition; and, finding no atropos untc. the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already out-lasted their monuments and mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of |