allowed one peep from his grave, to know the
failure of his malignant efforts.

It would be a curious study to analyse the
feelings of those odd testators when, pen in
hand, they sat down to dispose of their own
remains, after some truly fantastic fashion.
There is a whole line of these eccentrics;
indeed, they are to be expected in the ordinary
course of nature. It would seem that with this
unbounded power of disposition comes also a
sort of fitful fancy akin to the caprices of a
sick person, or it may be ascribed to an
exaggerated and morbid sense of self-importance.
However this may be, the instances of this
shape of extravagance are innumerable. There
have been legions of testators insanely and
jealously solicitous lest the mortal tenement they
left behind them should go down to the clay,
or come in contact with worms or clods; and
yet the same persons, had they to suffer
amputation of a leg or an arm, could scarcely be
uneasy as to what was done with their severed
limb. The tourist both in England and Ireland,
travelling along by-roads, is sometimes
pointed out a house with a peculiarly-shaped
roof, and is then told a story of some oddity of
a Dives who had left, to the great torment of
his executors, some very strict and minute
directions as to the putting away of his body
above ground in the roof. Sometimes this
arrangement is to be accounted for through the
observances of some fancied legal condition, as
where a lease has been granted for so long a
time " as the lessee shall be over ground;" and
though the law-courts would have very soon
shown that this was not a carrying out of the
spirit of the agreement, the baffled heirs might
not have cared to take the trouble of making a
new disposition of the remains, and would have
left them where they were.

About the year seventeen hundred and
twenty-four, people who passed by Stevenage
had a bill thrust into their hands inviting them
to visit an old hovel that once belonged to a
certain Henry Trigg, and " where," added the
bill, " his remains are still upon the rafters of
the west-end of the hovel, and may be viewed
by any traveller who may think it worthy of
notice." The former tenant of the remains
thus disposed of, had made his last will almost
entirely, it would seem, with a view to secure
the gratification of this peculiar idiosyncrasy.
He began it with that sort of complacent and
even jubilant strain of piety, which is common,
however, to all testators. "I, Henry Trigg,
grocer," he wrote, "being very infirm and
weak in body, but of perfect sound mind and
memory, praised be God for it, do give my soul
to God; as to my body, I commit it to the
west- end of my hovel, to be decently laid there
upon a floor erected by my executors, upon the
purlins, nothing doubting, but that at the
great resurrection I will receive the same
again."

All his property, with the exception of some
slight legacies, he bequeathed to his brother, a
clergyman, provided he strictly carried out this
condition; if he should be disinclined to do so,
it was to go to a second brother on the same
condition; should he refuse, it passed to a
nephew on the same terms. The whole wound
up with a number of bequests, varying in
amount from a guinea downwards to one
shilling, and even the shilling and guinea were
not to pass to the legatee until three years after
his decease.

Some of these cases are, of course, due to
sheer insanity, in others to an almost grotesque
spirit of mischief, but in a far larger class they
may be set down as the outpourings of arrogance;
as who should say, " I have the wealth,
the will, and the power, and am entitled, if I
choose it, to make my whims and humours
attend on what I give." Under which category
is to be classed that Mr. Tuke, of Rotherham,
who died in 1810, leaving a testamentary
disposition that must have been the delight and
amusement of the district. He left a penny to
every child that should attend his funeral, to
the utter disorganisation of, or certain holiday
at, every school for miles round. The result
was, that some seven hundred nocked to pay
this tribute of respect: they received the
allotted reward. This could have been no
yearning towards infant life, for he was a
notorious and churlish miser of the Scrooge pattern.
To every poor woman in the parish was left the
sum of one shilling. The only legacies of
respectable amount were those that had reference
to the glorification of his poor old remains
half a guinea was left' to the bellringers " to
strike off one peal of grand bobs" at the precise
moment he was put down into the clay. Seven
of the oldest navvies were to receive a guinea
for "puddling him up" in his grave. There
must have been great merriment and general
hilarity at these odd obsequies. His more
serious dispositions were quite in keeping. To
a daughter he left four guineas; but to his old
and faithful servant twenty guineas a year. To
an old woman, " who had for eleven years
tucked him up in bed," was bequeathed the
sum of one guinea. Finally, he set apart a
sort of endowment to supply forty dozen penny
loaves, which, at noon on every Christmas-day
for ever, were to be thrown down from the
steeple of the parish church. These ridiculous
fancies were no doubt the offspring of a petty
vanity wishing to obtain the most fuss and
publicity at a very cheap rate tinged also with a
wish to leave some trouble behind him.

Akin to this testator must have been Oliver
the Miller, who died about seventy years ago.
He seems to have had a strange fancy for the
colour popularly associated with millers and
their men, and perhaps their hats. He was
interred in a choice spot, and close to his mill,
in a tomb made by himself some thirty years
before, and in a coffin which had reposed many
years under his bed. It was all painted white,
and was carried by eight men harmoniously
dressed in the same colour; a young girl,
twelve years old, officiated as clergyman, and
preached a sermon at the edge of the grave.
Now, again, it may be asked, what pleasure
could Oliver have found in the anticipation of
these grotesque rites?

To the pure Tartuffe element the preparation