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most eminent to which mortals are born, or can aspire, is undeniable; and, it is therefore fitting for posterity to know, that the promise and earnest which she had afforded of a capacity to fill that station with usefulness and honor, was evinced by the unqualified grief of all her countrymen for her loss. Such a period of sorrow and dismay has but rarely occurred in the history of the nation. Some events are magnified by those among whom they take place, for the same reason that objects appear greater in proportion as they are near; but the present, lamentable as it is, being still more likely to affect in its consequences, than in its immediate occurrence, cannot well be overvalued by contemporaries. Let the nation well consider how posterity may have to speak of the event in their narratives. Among any people, with whom the law of primogeniture prevails in the claims to the crown, an uninterrupted succession from father to son, or from father to daughter, in direct descent, is of great importance to public order. At all events then, a turn in the succession must here occur which will form an epoch to historians, and oblige genealogists to alter their line. May the new one, from whomsoever it springs, still lead to national honor and prosperity! But it is interesting to know, that she to whom we have for twenty years looked for a continuation of the old line, was not likely to fall below its most valuable antecedent members in solid virtue and worth; and, that the British nation, both personally and politically,

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loved her whilst living, and lament her when dead.

"From these reflections (and similar ones crowd upon the mind on every view of this melancholy subject), we turn to that now desolate mansion, where perhaps the most hopeless-hapless man in the country at the present moment, the wretched Prince Leopold, lies in all the agony of his grief. Let not the disappointment be mentioned of that hope and promise of being the root from which the future sovereigns of the freest nation upon earth were to proceed" Thou shalt get Kings, tho' thou be none"-but of the utter defeat and destruction of all those prospects of domestic happiness, which not a month since appeared so bright and unclouded. On that day three weeks we find him accompanying the Princess in one of those rides she took about the grounds of Claremont, conversing, as we may easily conceive, upon the future-sketching plans of domestic happiness in their new characters of father and mother-fancying themselves already surrounded by their offspring-pursuing the story of their happy lives long into the future-and promising themselves

That which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.'

All these things we may well imagine to have been the subject-matter of their converse. And now, three weeks only elapsed-nay, not so much! And that voice which so discoursed, mute-and

for ever: and that eye glazed and cold in death: And the husband cut off from wife and child, now following, in single solitary wretchedness, the inanimate corpse, through these scenes of former happiness. If there be anguish greater than this we know it not.

"In consequence of the indisposed state of Prince Leopold, the following bulletin was issued on Friday the 7th:

"The Prince Leopold has had a bad night, but is more composed this morning.'

"His Serene Highness was beginning to assume a settled kind of composure when the circumstance of the embalming of the body of the Princess so horrified him, that he appeared to shun every consolation which was offered to him. The body of the Princess was indeed embalmed before Prince Leopold was aware of the operation; for it was supposed, that he might be the more affected by it, as the ceremony, though observed from time immemorial, with respect to the corpses of the English Royal Family, is unknown in most of the foreign courts, and is, in fact, under all its circumstances of mangling, as well as useless indecorum, revolting to the heart. When his Highness was at last informed of it, he heard it with much agitation; and from that moment he regained not the composure which he had at least seemed to acquire.

"It has been stated that his Majesty gave directions, on the demise of his beloved daughter

Amelia, that the barbarous practice of embalming, a relic transmitted to us from the age of the grossest barbarism,* should be dispensed with, considering it as indecent and absurd.

Diodorus Siculus informs us, that, among the Egyptians, the inventors of this art, the person who performed this part of the act, fled as soon as he had discharged his office; and all who were present pursued him with stones, as one who had incurred the public malediction: for they regarded with horror every one who had offered any violence to a human body. But the ancient manner of embalming bodies, and of preserving them for many ages, is absolutely lost. Forty days were spent by the Egyptians in completing the operation, and the moderns have not been able to discover the ingredients of which their mummies were composed. What Herodotus relates of certain procedures in this art, has been proved impracticable in the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions. In these latter days, however, dead bodies have been preserved for a considerable length of time. Brydone describes a convent of Capuchins near Palermo, in which there is a vast subterraneous apartment, divided into large commodious galleries, the walls on each side of which are hollowed into a variety of niches, as if intended for a great collection of statues; these niches, instead of statues, are all filled with dead bodies, set upright upon their legs, and fixed by the back to the inside of the niche: their number is about 300; they are all dressed in the clothes they usually wore, and form a most respectable and venerable assembly. The skin and muscles by a certain preparation become as dry and as hard as a piece of stockfish; and although many of them have been here upwards of 250 years, yet none are reduced to skeletons; the muscles, indeed, in some appear to be a good deal more shrunk than in others, probably because these persons had been more extenuated at the time of their death. Here the people of Palermo pay daily visits to their deceased friends, and recall with pleasure and regret the scenes of their past life. Here they familiarize themselves with their future state, and choose the company they would wish to

"It might have been useful at a period when the body was kept for several weeks in state, and without being enclosed in lead. But now it can be retained only on the score of precedent, unless it be for the sake of the fees.

"On the demise of any member of the Royal Family, it is the duty of the Serjeant Surgeon of the King to embalm the body. Accordingly Sir Everard Home had an audience of the Prince Regent, on the Thursday morning; and on the following day he repaired to Claremont, accompanied by Sir David Dundas and Mr. Brande, to perform the melancholy task, in which they were assisted by Mr. Neville the surgeon to the household at Claremont. At the same time it has been understood that to satisfy the anxious and tortured feelings of all those who most tenderly loved the Princess, as well as

keep in the other world. It is a common thing to make choice of their niche, and to try if their body fits it, that no alterations 'may be necessary after they are dead: and sometimes, by way of a voluntary penance, they accustom themselves to stand for hours in these niches. We ourselves, three years ago, saw in the Protestant church of St. Thomas, at Strasburg, the bodies of two noble persons, a father and his daughter, which have been preserved upwards of three hundred years: they were habited in the dresses which they wore immediately previous to their deaths, not a hair or an eye-brow was wanting; the eyes were open, and they appeared to be still alive. The minister informed us, that the cases in which they were enclosed were concealed during the period of the Revolution; for, as each of them has valuable rings on the fingers, they would, in all probability, have been mutilated or destroyed.

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