SKETCH OF THOMAS SAY. 687 



ground. We raise and pass the curtain, and before us stands the 

 coffin. 



It is a plain box, but of great size, being twelve feet in length and 

 four in thickness, each side consisting of a single slab of hard and 

 costly wood brought from the province of Sze Chuen, far in the inte- 

 rior. Its cost was over fifteen hundred dollars. The man who for 

 years ruled with a rod of iron before whose mandate one hundred 

 thousand heads fell in the execution-ground of Canton, whose diplo- 

 matic skill baffled for years the ministers of European powers, who, 

 when his city was little better than a ruin and a desert, could not fight, 

 and would not yield lest he should betray the prestige of the inviola- . 

 bility of Canton, after all his power, skill, and obstinacy lies unhon- 

 ored and almost unattended without the walls of the city which he 

 could rule but could not save. 



But we must hasten to a close. The grave having been fixed upon 

 and the day for interment appointed, an altar is prepared in the room 

 in which the body lies, and upon it are piled fruits and cakes, while in 

 front of it we see a roast pig and a goat, the two latter being often made 

 in lacquer- ware, and hired for the occasion. At the door are placed mu- 

 sicians, and from time to time large masses of silvered paper are burned 

 at the entrance of the room. The body is then escorted to the tomb, 

 all the mourners dressed in white, and the offerings, pig, goat, and all, 

 form part of the pageant. But the principal object is the ancestral 

 tablet, borne in a red shrine, and often accompanied by the figures of 

 the household gods. On reaching the grave some religious ceremonies 

 are performed, large quantities of silvered and gilt paper, and imita- 

 tions of clothes, ships, etc., are burned, this being the readiest way of 

 supplying the wants of the deceased, and forwarding his luggage to 

 the spirit-land. The provisions furnish forth a feast, the coffin is in- 

 terred, and the ancestral tablet borne back to the ancestral hall, where 

 we will leave it, until the return of the period for the worship of the 

 dead leads us back to the now closing grave. Temple Bar. 



-+*+- 



SKETCH OF THOMAS SAY. 



By J. S. KINGSLEY. 



THOMAS SAY, the father of American zoology, was born in Phil- 

 adelphia, July 27, 1787. Of his youth we know comparatively 

 nothing. At an early age his parents, who were Quakers, placed him 

 in a boarding-school under the control of the Friends, but Say did not 

 take kindly to the instruction there provided, and acquired nothing 

 but a most intense dislike for his teachers and for all ordinary branches 

 of study. We are justified in ascribing this antipathy on his part to 



