As recumbent effigies are in vogue, there are some points connected herewith worthy of discussion at the present time in your pages. The ultra-admirers of the mediÆval monuments will not allow the slightest deviation from what they regard as the prescriptive model—a figure with the head straight, and the hands raised in prayer. One of their arguments is, that the ancient effigy is alive, while the modern modifications are in a state of death, and consequently repulsive to the feelings of the spectator. In my opinion, however, the vitality of the old ones is very questionable. Let us reflect upon their probable origin. In former times the bodies of ecclesiastics and other personages were laid in state, exposed to public view, and even carried into the churches in that condition: a custom still prevalent abroad. It is reasonable to conjecture that the monuments intended to perpetuate this scene in stone, imitating the form of the deceased, with the canopy and bier, and adorned with armorial bearings and other appropriate devices. Images of wax were frequently substituted for the corpse, some of which (among them Queen Elizabeth's) are still preserved in Westminster Abbey; but the practice was kept up even down to the time of the great Duke of Marlborough. It is recorded in history, that during the progress of the body of our Henry V. from France, a figure of the king, composed of boiled leather, was placed upon the coffin. York Cathedral contains a beautiful example of a complete monument of this description in the Early English style, which degenerated by degrees into the four-post bed, with its affectionate couple, of the Elizabethan period. It is obviously a fair deduction, from these circumstances, that the sepulchral effigies are "hearsed in death."

From Mr. Ruskin's Stones of Venice, it appears that the figures on the Venetian tombs of the Middle Ages are manifestly dead; and such, it may be inferred, is the impression conveyed to his highly cultivated mind by the contemplation of those in our own country.

"In the most elaborate examples," says this observant writer, "the canopy is surmounted by a statue, generally small, representing the dead person in the full strength and pride of life, while the recumbent figure shows him as he lay in death. And at this point the perfect type of the Gothic tomb is reached."

Describing one at Verona, of the fourteenth century, he observes:

"The principal aim of the monument is to direct the thoughts to his image as he lies in death, and to the expression of his hope of resurrection."

And towards the conclusion of his review of their development he writes:

"This statue in the meantime has been gradually coming back to life through a curious series of transitions. The Vendramin monument is one of the last which shows, or pretends to show, the recumbent figure laid in death. A few years later this idea became disagreeable to polite minds; and lo! the figures which before had been laid at rest upon the tomb pillow, raised themselves on their elbows, and began to look around them. The soul of the sixteenth century dared not contemplate its body in death."

Flaxman, in his remarks on the monuments of Aylmer de Valence and Edmund Crouchback in Westminster Abbey, admires

"The solemn repose of the principal figure, representing the deceased in his last prayer for mercy to the throne of grace, the delicacy of thought in the group of angels bearing the soul, and the tender sentiment of concern variously expressed in the relations ranged in order round the basement."

As, however, a canopy on the former exhibits a living figure of the departed on horseback, such as Mr. Ruskin notices in Italy, and as the angels are said to bear the soul, the knight must certainly have breathed his last. The raised hands are no refutation of the argument, since there are grounds for the assertion that those of the dead bodies laid in state were sometimes tied together to retain them in the suitable position. A few exceptional instances, no doubt, occur of variations in the attitude irreconcileable with death, and equally inconsistent with a reclining posture. It must also be admitted that in brasses and incised slabs (which may be regarded in many respects as parallel memorials), the eyes are almost invariably unclosed; yet the fact, neither in this case nor in that of the carved marble, does not by any means certify that the individuals are alive.

Since then there is so much reason for the supposition that the generality of our ancestors are sculptured in the sleep of death, the recumbent figure of a Christian clasping the Bible, and slightly turning his head, just passed away into another state of existence (not into purgatory, but into a happier world), cannot surely be now deemed unsuitable to a Gothic church.

C. T.

QUERIES ON SOUTH'S SERMONS.

I should be glad to know the authority for the following statement in South's sermon, Against long Extempore Prayers, vol. i. p. 251., Tegg's edition, 1843:

"These two things are certain, and I do particularly recommend them to your observation: One, that this way of praying by the Spirit, as they call it, was begun, and first brought into use here in England, in Queen Elizabeth's days, by a Popish priest and Dominican friar, one Faithful Commin by name. Who, counterfeiting himself a Protestant, and a zealot of the highest form, set up this new spiritual way of praying, with a design to bring the people first to a contempt, and from thence to an utter hatred and disuse of our Common Prayer; which he still reviled as only a translation of the mass, thereby to distract men's minds, and to divide our Church. And this he did with such success, that we have lived to see the effects of his labours in the utter subversion of Church and State; which hellish negociation, when this malicious hypocrite came to Rome to give the Pope an account of, he received of him, as so notable a service well deserved, besides a thousand thanks, two thousand ducats for his pains."

Also, who was W. W., the author of "a virulent and insulting pamphlet, entitled, A Letter to a Member of Parliament, printed in the year 1697, and as like the author himself, W. W., as malice can make it," referred to in a note by South at the end of his sermon on The Recompence of the Reward, vol. ii. p. 152. Is this pamphlet still in existence?

W. H. Gunner.

Winchester.