Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 2.djvu/314

288 condition, their expression is very appropriate, magistrates having a noble and severe mien, and their wives generally an amiable and pious look. Towards the latter part of the sixteenth century the embellishments of incised slabs are in the renaissant style, with Italian pilasters and mouldings, but altogether poor and feeble in execution; they were soon discontinued, and except in the bearing of inscriptions, monumental slabs became quite plain. The Costume, however, of the sixteenth century is in general very rich. The chasuble, for instance, is covered with flowers and arabesques, and often has an embroidered cross on its front, (like one in Salisbury Cathedral,) although the author of an ancient work, called "The Book of the Imitation," says that chasubles, with crosses on them, were never used out of Italy. Canons have their heads covered with the aumusse, and are also represented with the insignia of any particular dignities which they may have held. Bailiffs and other officers of the Chapter are clad in habiliments appropriate to their employments, their dress being a cloak descending to the heels, with loose sleeves, or else an open short frock-coat, with narrow sleeves terminating at the wrists, and a small turned-down collar; women have flowing sleeves adorned with fringe, and cords ending in knobs, and a garment like a pelerine having a small collar over it. The inscriptions of the sixteenth century always give the family name of the deceased, and fully set forth his honorary titles; the names of priests being often preceded by the Words venerable and discreet—epithets restricted to them alone—while the laity are designated as honourable, though sometimes wise and good; and women, whether they had been single or married, are termed merely 'damsels.' After the name, moreover, we find all the scientific degrees of the defunct, whether Doctor, Licentiate, or Bachelor, &c.; the secondary inscriptions, before alluded to, as occurring on the middle of the slab, are still short and sentential, like those in our own country churches, viz.:—

The principal inscriptions are, however, longer than those of former centuries, and generally end with or  and occasionally the emphatically pious ejaculation,  The vulgar tongue is almost invariably employed, although Latin was then the language of the schools and scientific bodies.

All funereal monuments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are bad imitations of Greek and Italian art, except a few at the beginning of the seventeenth century, on which we still find the ornamentation, the bordering, the panelling, and the effigy, accompanied with its trumpet-bearing angels of preceding times. But soon afterwards effigies on slabs gave place to antique semicircular or flattened arches on pilasters, with capitals, which, though somewhat like Corinthian, have, instead of acanthus leaves, the