That, in strewing their tombs, the
Romans affected the rose; the Greeks amaranthus and
myrtle: that the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel,
cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant,
lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes. Wherein
Christians, who deck their coffins with bays, have found
a more elegant emblem; for that it, seeming dead, will
restore itself from the root, and its dry and exsuccous
* "Vale, vale, nos to ordine quo natura permittet sequamur."
leaves resume their verdure again; which, if we mis-
take not, we have also observed in furze. Whether the
planting of yew in churchyards hold not its original
from ancient funeral rites, or as an emblem of resur-
rection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit
conjecture.
They made use of musick to excite or quiet the
affections of their friends, according to different har-
monies. But the secret and symbolical hint was the
harmonical nature of the soul; which, delivered from
the body, went again to enjoy the primitive harmony
of heaven, from whence it first descended; which,
according to its progress traced by antiquity, came
down by Cancer, and ascended by Capricornus.
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