!^,^2 CUSTOMS AT T.UNEliALS. - 
oiight tQ, b^ a homicide.—Lycui’gus was not more favoar* 
%ble : his laws, bachelors are branded with infamy, excluded fi’otii 
offices civil and military, and even from the shows and public 
sports. At certain feasts they were forced to appear, to be exposed 
to the public derision, and led round the market-place. At one of 
their feasts, the women led them in this condition to the altars, where 
they were obliged tomakethea^wezide honourable to nature, accompanied 
with a number of blows and lashes with a rod, at discretion. To com- 
plete the affront, they forced them to sing certain songs composed 
in their own derision. 
The Christian religion has been supposed to be more indulgent to 
the bachelor state, because the apostle Paul has recommended it as 
preferable, as it certainly was during the early ages of Christianity, 
when a man was in danger of suffering, not only in his own person or 
property, but in those of his nearest and dearest connexions, for the 
sake of religion, which rendered such persecutions much more dread- 
ful and severe upon the married than the unmarried. The ancient 
church, overlooking this principle, upon which the apostle’s advice is 
evidently founded, recommended the bachelor state, as W'ell as that of 
perpetual virginity in the other sex, as not only more perfect than the 
married state, but even as highly meritorious, and thus gave birth to 
the absurd system of monasteries, nunneries, and the celibacy of the 
clergy, which for so many ages has burdened Europe with thousands 
of idle drones of both sexes. In the canon law, we find injunctions 
on bachelors, when arrived at puberty, either to marry, or to turn 
monks, and profess chastity in earnest. In England there was a tax 
on bachelors, after twenty-five years of age, (121. 10s. for a duke, 
a common person. Is.) by 7 Wil. III. 1095. In Britain, at present, 
they are taxed by an extra duty on their servants. Every man of 
the age of 21 years and upwards, never having been married, who 
shall keep one male servant or more, shall pay ll. 5s. for each, above, 
or in addition to, the ordinary duties leviable for servants. Every 
man of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, never having been 
married, keeping one female servant, shall pay 2s. 6d. in addition to 
the former 2s. 6d.; 6s. in addition for each, if he has two female ser- 
vants ; and 10s. in addition for each, for three or more female servants. 
Customs at Funerals : 
, Following the corpse to the grave, carrying evergreens on that 
occasion in the band, together with the use of psalmody.- -Bourne 
tells us, that the heathens followed the corpse to the grave, because it 
presented to them what would shortly follow, how they themselves 
should be so carried out to be deposited in the grave. Christians, 
he adds, observe the custom for the very same reason. And he fur- 
ther remarks, that this form of procession is an emblem of our dying 
shortly after our friend; so the carrying in our hands of ivy, sprigs of 
laurel, rosemary, or other evergreens, is an emblem of the soul’s im- 
mctrtality. — The Romans and other heathens, upon this occasipn, 
liiade use of cypress, which being once cut, will never flourish nor 
grow again, as an emblem of their dying for ever; but instead of 
