CHAP. x. BURIAL RITES OF POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD. 193 



portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it 

 indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on 

 their way to a land of spirits ; while among the funeral gifts 

 are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic 

 deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros, we 

 have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of 

 burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, 

 to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. 

 Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that 

 remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a here 

 after, the epithet of ' noble,' which Dryden gave to what he 

 seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition 

 of our race : 



' as Nature first made man 

 When wild in woods the noble savage ran.' * 



Siege of Granada, Part I., act i. scene 1. 



