MYSTIC MEMORY. THE BOOK OF DAYS. MYSTIC MEMORY. thinks that the cases on record are not to be ex- himself, in which a second reverie appears to plained otherwise than as cases of fore-knowledge. have presented a renewal of a former one. About That under certain conditions,' says he, the four years ago,' says he, 'I suffered severely from human mind is capable of foreseeing the future, derangement of the stomach, and upon one occamore or less distinctly, is hardly to be questioned. sion, after passing a restless and disturbed night, May we not suppose that, in dreams or waking I came down to breakfast in the morning, experireveries, we sometimes anticipate what will befall encing a sense of general discomfort and uneasius, and that this impression, forgotten in the ness. I was seated at the breakfast-table with interval, is revived by the actual occurrence of some members of my family, when suddenly the the event foreseen?' He goes on to remark that room and objects around me vanished away, and in the Confessions of Rousseau there is a remark- I found myself, without surprise, in the street of able passage which appears to support this theory. a foreign city. Never having been abroad, I This singular man, in his youth, taking a solitary imagined it to have been a foreign city from the walk, fell into a reverie, in which he clearly peculiar character of the architecture. The street foresaw the happiest day of his life,' which was very wide, and on either side of the roadway occurred seven or eight years afterwards. 'I saw there was a foot pavement elevated above the myself,' says Jean Jacques, as in an ecstasy, street to a considerable height. The houses had transported into that happy time and occasion, pointed gables and casemented windows overwhere my heart, possessing all the happiness hanging the street. The roadway presented a possible, enjoyed it with inexpressible raptures, gentle acclivity; and at the end of the street without thinking of anything sensual. I do not there was a road crossing it at right angles, backed remember being ever thrown into the future with by a green slope, which rose to the eminence of a more force, or of an illusion so complete as I hill, and was crowned by more houses, over which then experienced; and that which has struck me soared a lofty tower, either of a church or some most in the recollection of that reverie, now that other ecclesiastical building. As I gazed on the it has been realized, is to have found objects so scene before me I was impressed with an overexactly as I had imagined them. If ever a whelming conviction that I had looked upon it dream of man awake had the air of a prophetic before, and that its features were perfectly famivision, that was assuredly such.' Rousseau tells liar to me; I even seemed almost to remember how his reverie was realized at a fête champêtre, the name of the place, and whilst I was making in the company of Madame de Warens, at a an effort to do so a crowd of people appeared to place which he had not previously seen. The be advancing in an orderly manner up the street. condition of mind in which I found myself, all As it came nearer it resolved itself into a quaint that we said and did that day, all the objects procession of persons in what we should call fancy which struck me, recalled to me a kind of dream dresses, or perhaps more like one of the guild which I had at Annecy seven or eight years festivals which we read of as being held in some before, and of which I have given an account in of the old continental cities. As the procession its place. The relations were so striking, that in came abreast of the spot where I was standing thinking of them could not refrain from tears.' I mounted on the pavement to let it go by, and 'F' remarks that if Rousseau, on the second of as it filed past me, with its banners and gay parathese occasions, had forgotten the previous one, phernalia flashing in the sunlight, the irresistible save a faint remembrance of the ideas which he conviction again came over me that I had seen then conceived, it is evident that this would have this same procession before, and in the very been a case of the kind under consideration.' street through which it was now passing. Again I almost recollected the name of the concourse and its occasion; but whilst endeavouring to stimulate my memory to perform its function, the effort dispelled the vision, and I found myself, as before, seated at my breakfast-table, cup in hand. My exclamation of astonishment attracted the notice of one of the members of my family, who inquired "what I had been staring at?" Upon my relating what I have imperfectly described, some surprise was manifested, as the vision, which appeared to me to embrace a period of considerable duration, must have been almost instantaneous. The city, with its landscape, is indelibly fixed in my memory, but the sense of previous familiarity with it has never again been renewed. The "spirit of man within him" is indeed a mystery; and those who have witnessed the progress of a case of catalepsy cannot but have been impressed with the conviction that there are dormant faculties belonging to the human mind, which, like the rudimentary wings said to be contained within the skin of the caterpillar, are only to be developed in a higher sphere of being.'* Mr Elihu Rich, another correspondent of the useful little periodical above quoted, and who has more than once or twice experienced the mysterious sense of having been surrounded at some previous time by precisely the same circumstances, and taken a share in the same conversation,' favours this theory of explanation, and presents us with a curious illustration. A gentleman,' says he, of high intellectual attainments, now deceased, told me that he had dreamed of being in a strange city, so vividly that he remembered the streets, houses, and public buildings as distinctly as those of any place he ever visited. A few weeks afterwards he was startled by seeing the city of which he had dreamed. The likeness was perfect, except that one additional church appeared in the picture. He was so struck by the circumstance that he spoke to the exhibitor, assuming for the purpose the air of a traveller acquainted with the place. He was informed that the church was a recent erection.' To the same purport is an experience of a remarkable nature which Mr John Pavin Phillips, of Haverfordwest, relates as having occurred to In the same work the Rev. Mr W. L. Nichols, # Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., iii. 132. of Bath, adduces a still more remarkable case from a memoir of Mr William Hone, who, as is well-known, was during the greater part of his life a disbeliever of all but physical facts. He had been worn down to a low condition of vitality by a course of exertion of much the same character as that which gave Scott an experience of the mystic memory. Being called, in the course of business, to a particular part of London, with which he was unacquainted, he had noticed to himself, as he walked along, that he had never been there before. 'I was shewn,' he says, 'into a room to wait. On looking round, everything appeared perfectly familiar to me; I seemed to recognise every object. I said to myself, "What is this? I was never here before, and yet I have seen all this; and, if so, there is a very peculiar knot in the shutter.' He opened the shutter, and found the knot! Now then,' thought he, here is something I cannot explain on my principles; there must be some power beyond matter. This consideration led Mr Hone to reflect further on the wonderful relations of man to the Unseen, and the ultimate result was his becoming an earnestly religious man. Mr Nichols endeavours to shew the case might be explained by Dr Wigan's theory of a double brain; but it is manifestly beyond that theory to account for the preconception of the knot in the shutter, or the extraneous church in the visioned city. These explanations failing, we are in a manner compelled to think of clairvoyance or the prophetic faculty, because no other explanation is left. On this assumption, an experience of mystic memory might be supposed to arise from a previous dream, or it may be a day reverie, perhaps one of only an instant's duration and very recent occurrence, in which the assemblage of objects and transactions was foreseen :-it appears as the recollection of a more or less forgotten vision. FEBRUARY 18. St Simeon, or Simon, bishop of Jerusalem, martyr, 116. Saints Leo and Paragorius, martyrs, 3rd century. Born.-Mary I., Queen of England, 1516, Greenwich; Isaac Casaubon, scholar, 1559, Geneva; James Cassini, astronomer, 1677, Paris; Alexander Volta, discoverer of Voltaism, 1745, Como; David Bogue, eminent Independent divine, 1750, Dowlan, near Eyemouth, Berwickshire; Charles Lamb, essayist, 1775, London. Died.-Pope Gregory V., 999; George Duke of Clarence, murdered, 1478; Martin Luther, Protestant Reformer, Wittenberg, 1546; Sir Richard Baker, chronicler, 1645, Fleet Prison; John Louis de Balzac, littérateur, 1654, Angoulême; Dr Thomas Hyde, Orientalist, 1702, Hamburg; John Ernest Count Bernstorf, Hanoverian minister, 1772, Hamburg; Sir Jeffry Wyatville, architect (Windsor Castle restoration), 1840, Windsor; Baron von Biela, astronomer, 1856. GEORGE DUKE OF CLARENCE-WAS HE Among the old historic traditions of the Tower of London is the story that George Duke of FUNERAL GARLANDS. Clarence, brother of Edward the Fourth, who met his death on February 18, 1478, was, by order of his other brother, Richard Duke of Gloucester, drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine in the above prison. It is said that, being condemned to die, the Duke's partiality for Malmsey led him to select this strange mode of quitting life. There is considerable confusion in the narratives: first, Sir Thomas More insinuates that Gloucester's efforts to save Clarence were feeble; next, Lord Bacon accuses him of contriving his brother's death; and Shakspeare characterizes him as the associate of the murderers; while Sandford makes him the actual murderer. It is conjectured that Clarence was sentenced to be poisoned, and that the fatal drug may have been conveyed to him in 'malvoisie,' or Malmsey, then a favourite wine. The scene of the murder is disputed by some it is said to have been a room in the Bowyer Tower; but Mrs Hutchinson, the daughter of Sir Allan Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower, and herself born in it, and therefore well acquainted with the traditions of the building, states that the drowning took place in a chamber in the Bloody Tower. The only contemporary, or nearly contemporary authorities for the story, are Fabyan and Comines: now, Fabyan was an Englishman, and a Londoner, and had no doubt about it whatever. The Duke of Clarence,' he says, 'was secretly put to death, and drowned in a butt of malmsey within the Tower;' and Comines considered the authority good, otherwise he would scarcely have mentioned it in the way he has done. FUNERAL GARLANDS. Among the many customs which have been handed down to us from early times, but which have now, unfortunately, become obsolete, one of the most beautiful, simple, and most poetically symbolic, was that of carrying garlands before the corpses of unmarried females on their way to the grave, and then hanging up the garland in the church as a memento of the departed one. This sweetly pretty custom was in former ages observed in most parts of the kingdom, but in Derbyshire-that land of wild and beautiful scenery, where remnants of old customs, of popular beliefs and superstitions, and of the sports and habits of past generations linger in plenty about its mountains and its dales, its farms, its old halls, and its humbler homesteads-its observance has, perhaps, been continued to a much later period than in any other district. Indeed, in some of the Peak villages the garland has been carried even within memory of their more aged inhabitants. Flowers have. ever been an emblem of purity, and even in the primitive Christian church it was usual to place them, formed into wreaths or crowns, at the heads of deceased virgins. In every age, indeed, true virginity has been honoured in its purity by flowers pure as itself, and fresh from the hands of their Maker. The same feeling which tempts the bride to adorn her beautiful tresses with a wreath of orange blossoms for her nuptials-which gives rise to the offering of a bouquet of flowers, and to the custom of strewing the pathway she is to tread on her way to the altar-has been the origin of the custom of adorning the corpse, the coffin, and the grave of the virgin with the same frail but lovely and appropriate emblems. The same feeling which calls virginity itself a flower,' is that which places flowers in the hair of the bride, in the hands or around the face of the corpse, and in the garlands at the grave. In early ages, doubtless, the funeral garlands were composed of real flowers, but this gradually gave way to those composed of hoops and paper intermixed with ribands, which were much more durable, and had a better appearance when suspended in the churches. The custom has been referred to by many of the old writers, and Shakspeare himself alludes to it when he says, (Hamlet, Act v. scene 1,) Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants'-' crants' signifying 'garlands.' Old John Marston, in 1605, wrote in his Dutch Courtezan, 'I was afraid, i' faith, that I should ha' seene a garland on this beautie's hearse; and a ballad of a later date runs thus: 'But since I'm resolved to die for my dear, I'll chuse six young virgins my coffin to bear; Instead of green ribbands, a garland shall wear; Let all those fine garlands hang over my feet. William Sampson, in 1636, thus alludes to this charming custom, in his lines on the death of Miss E. Tevery : Why did the Lilly, Paunce, and Violet weepe, The Marigold ere sun-set in did creepe? At whose reflexion she us'd for to rise fed, Were for the buriall of a maiden, dead; Of incense was pow'red on, in chast desires Like to the sun in his bright Horizon : FUNERAL GARLANDS. The Maiden Vestalls, that with wat❜ry eies, Prefiguring thy greater eminence. So great their losse, that with watery eine, What would not they expresse now to have thee? Therefore, emparadic'd soule, rest thou in blisse.' Gay, in his poems, has more than allusion to the custom. He says: To her sweet memory flow'ry garlands strung On her now empty seat aloft were hung.' Of the garlands themselves but few examples remain, but they may still be seen in some of the churches of Derbyshire. It is curious that, although allusions to the custom are not unfrequent, no representation of a garland had ever been engraved until within the last few months, when some examples were given in The Reliquary quarterly journal.* Two of these engravings we are now enabled to reproduce. The first engraving shows five garlands as they at present exist in the north aisle of Ashford-in-the-Water Church, and the second exhibits on a larger scale a particular garland, one of eight which formerly existed in Matlock Church, but are now preserved in a local museum. They are thus described in The Reliquary : The garlands are each composed of two hoops of wood, with bands crossing each other at right angles, and attached to the hoops; thus forming a kind of open arched crown. The hoops and bands are all of wood, wrapped round with white paper, and at the top is a loop for suspension. The hoops and bands of the smaller one, as shewn in the accompanying woodcut, are decorated with paper flowers and rosettes, and at the top is a flower formed of hearts, and having somewhat the appearance of that of the Clarkia pulchella. From between the rosettes of the upper hoop, a paper riband, gimped on the edges, and ornamented by diamonds cut out with scissors, hangs down to below the lower band, to which they are not attached. In another example, the hoops and bands are decorated with paper flowers, or rosettes, intermixed with bunches of narrow slips, or shreds of paper; and at the top is a bunch of the same. over paper folded like a fan. Originally, the flowers have been formed, some of plain, and others of folded or crimped paper; and others again of both; and in some parts the paper has been afterwards coloured red or blue, thus producing a somewhat gay appearance. From the centre of the top are suspended a pair of gloves, cut out of white paper, and a kerchief or collar, also of paper, gimped on the edges and carefully folded. In most instances the name of the female in whose honour these garlands were prepared was written on the collar, gloves, or handkerchief. On this under notice no name occurs, but its date is probably of the latter part of last century. Through age the colours on the paper have nearly disappeared. Edited by Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A. London: John Russell Smith, Vol. i. p. 7. died at the age of twenty-one. On another of a later date, we succeeded with considerable difficulty in deciphering the following lines :"Be always ready, no time delay, I in my youth was called away, Great grief to those that's left behind, But I hope I'm great joy to find. Ann Swindel, Aged 22 years, Dec. 9th, 1798."' The form of garland of course varied in different localities, but the same general design prevailed wherever the custom was observed. In some of the metropolitan churches the garland, instead of being composed of real flowers, or of paper ones, was frequently composed of wire formed into filagree work resembling flowers and leaves, ornaments of gum, wax, and of dyed horn, and other materials, and sometimes had a gay, instead of a simple and pure appearance. A garland of this time has thus been described in the Antiquarian Repertory: These garlands at the funerals of the deceased were carried solemnly before the corpse by two maids, and afterwards hung up in some conspicuous place within the church, and they were made in the following manner, viz. :-the lower rim or circlet was a broad hoop of wood, 273 whereunto was fixed at the sides thereof two other hoops, crossing each other at the top at right angles, which formed the upper part, being about one-third longer than the width. These hoops were wholly covered with artificial flowers of paper, dyed horn, and silk, and more or less beautiful, according to the skill or ingenuity of the performer. In the vacancy inside, from the top, hung white paper cut in form of gloves, whereon was written deceased's name, age, &c., together with long slips of various coloured paper, or ribands; these were many times intermixed with gilded or painted shells of blown eggs, as farther ornaments, or it may be as emblems of bubbles, or the bitterness of this life; while other garlands had only a solitary hourglass hanging therein, as a more significant symbol of mortality.' Of garlands, and the funeral rites generally of a virgin, a most interesting account is to be found in a very scarce little book entitled The Virgin's Pattern, which describes the funeral of a lady at Hackney, named Perwich: "The hearse, covered with velvet, was carried by six servant maidens of the family, all in white. The sheet was held up by six of those gentlewomen in the school that had most acquaintance with her, in mourning habit, with white scarfs and gloves. A rich costly garland of gum-work adorned with banners and 'scutcheons, was borne immediately before the hearse, by two proper young ladies that entirely loved her. Her father and mother, with other near relations and their children, followed next the hearse in due order, all in mourning the kindred next to them; after whom came the whole school of gentlewomen, and then persons of chief rank from the neighbourhood and from the city of London, all in white gloves; both men, women, children, and servants having been first served with wine. The hearse having been set down, with the garit, the Rev. Dr Spurstow preached her land upon funeral sermon. This done, the coffin, anointed with rich odours, was put down into the grave, in the middle alley of the said (Hackney) church.' : In a singular old book entitled the Comical Pilgrim's Pilgrimage, the author says: When a virgin dies, a garland made of all sorts of flowers and sweet herbs, is carried by a young woman on her head, before the coffin, from which hang down two black ribands, signifying our mortal state, and two white, as an emblem of purity and innocence. The ends thereof are held by four young maids, before whom a basket full of herbs and flowers is supported by two other maids, who strew them along the streets to the place of burial; then, after the deceased, follow all her relations and acquaintance.' In some districts the garlands were only allowed to remain suspended in the church for a twelvemonth after the burial of the young woman. In others the garland was buried in the same grave with her. In Derbyshire, however, they appear to have remained hung up on the arches or on the beams of the roof, until they have either decayed away or been removed by order of some one whose love of change was greater than his veneration for these simple memorials of the dead. SIR JOHN PASTON. In 1662, an inquiry in the diocese of Ely was made as follows: Are any garlands and other ordinary funeral ensigns suffered to hang where they hinder the prospect, or until they grow foul and dusty, withered and rotten?' At Heanor, not many years ago, a number of these interesting relics, which had hung there for years, were removed at a general church-cleaning which took place on the coming in of a new incumbent, and at many other places they have been as ruthlessly destroyed. At Llandovery the garlands and gloves hang a year in the church, and are then taken down, and on each anniversary of the death of the virgin the grave is by some friend decorated with flowers, and a pair of white gloves is laid upon it. These gloves are taken away by the nearest relative who visits the grave that day. Beautifully and touchingly has Anna Seward sung: 'Now the low beams with paper garlands hung, In memory of some village youth or maid, Draw the soft tear, from thrill'd remembrance sprung; How oft my childhood marked that tribute paid! The gloves suspended by the garland's side, White as its snowy flowers with ribands tied. Dear village! long these wreaths funereal spread, Simple memorial of the early dead!' and it is much to be hoped that wherever any of these simple memorials of the early dead' exist, they may long escape the hand of the spoliator, and be allowed to remain where the loving hands and the sorrowing hearts of the mourners, generations past, had placed them. FUNERAL FEAST OF SIR JOHN PASTON. In 1466 died in London, Sir John Paston, the head of the wealthy family whose correspondence, known as the Paston Letters, presents so many pictures of the life of the English gentry of that age. Sir John was conveyed, for interment, to the Priory The body of of Bromholm, in the parish of Barton, a little village on the north-east coast, and within sight of the sea. A curious roll of accounts of the expenses of the funeral is preserved, from which we gather that for the feast, during three continuous days, one man was occupied in flaying beasts; and provision was made of thirteen barrels of beer, twenty-seven barrels of ale, one barrel of beer of the greatest assize, and a runlet of red wine of fifteen gallons. All these, however, copious as they seem, proved inadequate to the demand; for the account goes on to state that five coombs of malt at one time, and ten at another, were brewed up expressly for the occasion. Meat, too, was in proportion to the liquor; the country round about must have been swept of geese, chickens, capons, and such small gear, all which, with thirteen hundred eggs, thirty gallons of milk, and eight of cream, forty-one pigs, forty calves, and ten nete,' slain and devoured, give a fearful picture of the scene of festivity within the priory walls. Amongst such provisions, the article of bread bears nearly the other hand, the torches, the many pounds weight of same proportion as in Falstaff's bill of fare. On the wax to burn over the grave, and the separate candle of enormous stature and girth, form prodigious items. No less than £20 was changed from gold into smaller coin that it might be showered amongst the attendant throng; and twenty-six marks in copper had been used for the same object in London, before the pro |