TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ARTICLES. 257 
with care and minuteness, will reveal the funeral ceremony, and may 
furnish notions of the religious ideas and the different customs of the 
epoch. Sometimes, and it is found the most ancient custom, the body 
of the dead has been doubled down with the knees to the chin, as if 
to occupy the least possible space. At other times the body has been 
burnt, which would make us suspect fire-worship. Then the dead 
body has often been stretched at full length. Then there are several 
contemporary skeletons in the same tomb. Their particular arrange- 
ment.and the whole circumstances would make us conclude that they 
were human sacrifices. We should find in this case the victims-as if 
they had been thrown there negligently, whilst the central point had 
been reserved to the personage in whose honour the burial and sacri- 
fices had been made. In observing the distribution of certain flints 
and fragments of pottery in the earth, accumulated on ancient. sepul- 
chres, Dr. Keller has inferred the custom of throwing these objects: 
on the grave during its construction, which a curious passage of 
Shakspeare (Hamlet, Act V., Scene 1),* goes to confirm. 
It would seem that the funeral ceremony was sometimes connected 
with a feast on the spot, and that, immediately after, the vases which 
had been used at the repast were broken, and the fragments scattered 
on the grave. At other times, entire vases, crushed by the pressure 
of the earth, appear to have contained provisions for the dead with 
® Note by Translator.—We are referred by a note to the Memoirs of the Society of Anti= 
quaries of Zurich (Vol. III., Cahier V., 1845), in explanation of this passage. Not being 
able to turn to the authority, we can only suppose that reference is made to the burial of 
Ophelia. The poet says,— 
“Her death was doubtful ; 
And, but that great command o’ersways the order, 
She should in ground unsanctified have lodg’d 
Till the last trumpet; for charitable prayers; 
Shards, flints, and pebbles, should be thrown‘on her, 
Yet here she is allowed her virgin rites, 
Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
Of bell and burial.” 
* Waiden strewments” were the flowers and garlands which affection and devotion cast — 
over the coffin of the young, as it were as a type of their innocence. It will be recollected 
as the Queen scatters flowers over Ophelia’s grave, she says, “ Sweets to the sweet.” Our 
Protestantism has driven this ceremony from our churchyards, but itis a common ‘practice 
iiSoutbern Europe to:this day. 
