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generally prevailed among this people, and those of most otherChristian nations. The most ancient instance of a coffin onrecord, is that o ( Efheldreda, anno 605. (Sep. Mon. 1. xxvii.)From thence downwards stone coffins prevailed, and may betraced from the ninth century to the reign of the thirdHenry, and even to Henry VIII .—(Gent. Mag. 1759,p. G6.)
Matthew Paris , in vit. Albani, p. 95, informs us, it wasusual to bury monks, in the Norman times , naked in the bareground, Hill IFnri/i, the twentieth abbot of St. A [bans, orderedthey should have more decent funeral in stone coffins.
Also among primitive Christians the interment incities was as unusual as in ancient Rome , nor inchurches for many ages afterwards, for the first 300years: the ptrium, or church-yard, being the usual place ofrest. Afterwards porches, or porticoes, leading to thechurch. Subsequently certain princes, bishops, founders,and some few others, found their way into the church, andeven beneath the altar;' 7 but this was a privilege alwaysat the disposal of the bishop. On the establishment ofChristian rites, the disposal of dead bodies in their graves,as well as the living in the church, was directed thatthe one on rising should face the east, whilst the otherin the service looked that way, and always towards the offi-ciating minister. This practice in the Romish church wasfirst introduced by Gregory the Great , and brought here byCuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, anno 750, who di-rected, besides those regulations, that vaults should be madein churches, tombs and other mementa be erected, to remindthe living to offer up their prayers for the dead.
It has been remarked, by an intelligent antiquary, that inancient times, in this, and, perhaps, other Roman Catholic countries, interment was never practised on the north sideof the church. An opinion prevails that it was left formalefactors, unbaptized, for suicides, and for such who hadincurred the greater censures of the church: common obser-vation will confirm the fact, at the present moment, thatmany more graves occur on the south than on the north sideof our churches.
MUSIC.
The science of music, or rather of harmony, is extremelyancient; insomuch so, that, with respect to the latter, it issaid to be coeval with nature herself. But as it has relation