THE BEOOM. 21 



but rare exceptions, deface the hallowed walls, 

 and disturb the quietude of feeling otherwise pro- 

 duced by the place. It is well that this sacred 

 fane has, at least, its one truly Christian emblem 

 of the putting off of mortality; so different from 

 the gigantic and muscular-looking angels bearing 

 departed spirits to heaven on petrified clouds re- 

 sembling feather-beds ; while cherubs "bodiless in 

 the most material sense of the word trumpet 

 forth, with inflated cheeks, the "name, and style, 

 and title," of the being who " departs this life." 

 Few, I think, will not have felt how different 

 are the emotions provoked by some such dese- 

 cration of the memory of the dead, and those 

 evoked by the simple device of the empty, and 

 placidly opened husk, from which the ripened seed 

 has fallen only to rise into a new life : fit com- 

 panion for the noblest epitaph in the world ; the 

 beautiful "Emigrcwib" of the painter, Albert Durer. 

 But I have wandered far beyond my bounds, and 

 must return to the learned and valuable researches 

 of Mr. Gough Nichols,* .of which I have already so 

 largely availed myself. At an early period, as he 

 shews, the broom was a very favourite emblem in 

 France. In the year 1 234, St. Louis, as he is usually 

 styled, celebrated the coronation of his queen, the 

 fair Margaret of Provence, by creating a new order 

 of knighthood :( the soldiers of the broom, Mi- 

 lites genestella, the collar of which was composed of 



* In the " Archseologia." 



t According, however, to Guillaume de Nangis, this insti- 

 tution only took place in the year 1267. See Ibid. 



