NOTES ON LATIN INSCRIPTIONS FOUND IN BRITAIN. 95 



pursuits ; their moral tendency ; the influenee of such pursuits iii 

 promoting the intellectual progress of a people, and in raising them 

 in the scale of human beings ; the strength and prosperity and glory 

 which science bestows on every nation that is alive to its value ; 

 the great services rendered to mankind by every conquest within the 

 domain of truth ; or, in a word, the important part science fulfils in 

 promoting in a thousand ways the happiness and well-being of our 

 race — abundant reason appears for parliament and people, for men of 

 all ranks and degrees in the country, to do all that in their several 

 places they can do to promote the great and interesting and im- 

 portant objects which your Institute has in view ; and I most 

 earnestly pray that the success you have had in the past may but 

 symbolise the much greater success which awaits your high pursuits 

 in the future. 



NOTES ON LATIN INSCEIPTIONS FOUND IN BEITAIN. 



PART XI. 



BY THE REV. JOHN M^CAUL, LL.D., 



PRESIDENT OP TJNIVEESITY COLLEGE, TORONTO, ETC. 



65. The letters D.M. are commonly used, as is well known, for Di'j> 

 Manibus, and usually commence a funereal inscription. So general 

 was their use in this sense, that they are found even in Christian 

 Epitiphs,* inadvertently placed there without reference to their ori- 



* This seems the simplest explanation of this anomaly. Perhaps grave-stones 

 were kept ready for sale, having D. M. inscribed on them. See Orelli, n. 4223. 

 Fabretti, p. 112, proposed Deo Magna or Miximo, as the expansion in such casea, 

 whilst Mabillon, p. 15, with whom Morcelli, Stil. ii, 71, sfjems to agree, regards 

 this use of D. M. as indicating that in the early ages, some of the less informed 

 Christians retained a portion of the Pagan superstitions. Mr. Burgon, Letters 

 from Rome, p. 213, remarks on this subject: "We begin ' To the memory,' which 

 is quite the Heathen fashion. We talk (in poetry) of the ' urn,' the ' ashes of the 

 dead,' the ' shade,' and so forth, without at all meaning it. Urns, and hour- 

 glasses, and baby-heads with wings, and a weeping willow, and ladies leaning 

 against broken columns, are not by any means symbolical of our actual belief or 

 practice." 



