OF FOREST-TREES.

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from the enemy, as trophies; as appears in the yet remaining stump of bookiv.

Marius at Rome, and the reverses of several medals. Famous for this

was the pregnant Oleaster which grew in the Forum of Megara, on which

the heroes of old left their shields and bucklers, and other warlike

harnefs, till in procefs of time it had covered them with succefsive coats

of bark and timber, as it was afterwards found when Pericles sacked the

city, which the Oracle predicted should be impregnable, till a tree should

bring forth armour *. We have already mentioned Rebekah, and read * Diod. Sic.

of Kings themselves that honoured such places with their sepulchres: llb ' xll ‘

What else should be the meaning of 1 Chron. x. 12. when the valiant

men of Jabesh interred the bones of Saul and Jonathan under the Oak ?

* Famous was the Hyrnethian, Coemetry where Diaphon lay. Ariadne ’stomb was iiy the Amathusian Grove in Crete , now Candy; for theybelieved that the spirits and ghosts of men delighted to expatiate and ap-pear in such solemn places, as the learned Grotius notes from Theophylact ,speaking of the Daemons, upon Matth. xvii. 18; for which cause Plato gave permifsion, that trees should be planted over graves, to obumbrateand refresh them. The most antient Conclitoria and burying places werein such nemorous solitudes. The Hypogeum in Machpelah , purchasedby the' patriarch Abraham of the sons of Heth, Gen. xxiii. for Sarah, hisown dormitory, and family sepulchre, was conveyed to him with particularmention of all the Trees and Groves about it; and this is the very firstprecedent I ever read of conveying a purchase by a formal deed.

Our blefsed Saviour, as we shall show, chose the garden sometimes forhis Oratory—and dying, for the place of his Sepulchre; and we doavouch for many weighty causes, that there are no places more fit to buryour dead in than our gardens and groves, or airy fields, sub dio, where ourbeds may be decked and carpeted with verdant and fragrant flowers,trees, and perennial plants, the most natural and instructive hieroglyphicsof our expected resurrection and immortality; besides what they mightconduce to the meditation of the living, and the taking off our cogitationsfrom dwelling too intently upon more vain and sensual objects; q la j-custom of burying in churches, and near about them, (especially in greatand populous cities) being a novel presumption, indecent, sordid, andvery prejudicial to health; for which I am sorry it is become socustomary. Graves and sepulchres were, of old, made and erected by thesides of the most frequented highways, which being many of them mag-

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