“The Funeral Tapers (however thought of by some) are of the same harmless import.  Their meaning is, to show that the departed souls are not quite put out, but having walked here as the Children of the Light, are now going to walk before God in the Light of the Living.  The sun never rose to the ancients, no, not so much as a candle was lighted, but of this signification. ‘Vincamus’ was their word, whensoever the Lights came in; [Greek:  phos gar ten Niken], etc., for Light (saith Phavorinus) betokeneth victory.  It was to show what trust they put in the Light, in whom we are more than conquerors.  Our meaning is the same when, at the bringing in of a candle, we use to put ourselves in mind of the Light of Heaven:  which those who list to call superstition do but ‘darken counsel by words without knowledge.’ Job xxxviii. 2.”—­Gregorie’s Works, 4th ed. p. 110.  Lond. 1684.

I believe it is a fact, that in some churches (I hope not many) lamps or candles are placed on the altar unlighted during divine service.  Now I would not quarrel with persons who have objections to altar lights, &c., but I have no patience with that worse than superstition which would place unlighted candles on the altar,—­if they symbolize any thing, it is damnation, excommunication, misery, and dark woe.

Coming out of a church one time in which unlighted candles were ostentatiously displayed, I was forcibly reminded of an hieroglyphical of Quarles—­an extinguished taper,—­and under it the words, “Sine lumine inane.”

  “How canst thou be useful to the sight? 
  What is the taper not endued with light?”

I can hardly refrain from quoting here a beautiful passage from Wordsworth: 

  “Our ancestors within the still domain
  Of vast cathedral, or conventual gloom,
  Their vigils kept:  when tapers day and night
  On the dim altar burn’d continually,
  In token that the house was evermore
  Watching to God.  Religious men were they,
  Nor would their reason, tutor’d to aspire
  Above this transitory world, allow
  That there should pass a moment of the year
  When in their land the Almighty’s service ceased.”

Any communication of interest of the above subject will much oblige

JARLTZBERG.

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REPLIES TO MINOR QUERIES.

Handbell before a Corpse (Vol. ii., p. 478.).—­It is usual, at the funeral of any member of the University of Oxford, for the University marshal and bellman to attend in the character of mutes.  As the procession moves along, the latter rings his bell at about half-minute time.  I have witnessed it also when the deceased has been one of the family of a member of the University, and when he has been a matriculated person.  I have never considered it as anything but a cast of the bellman’s office, to add more solemnity to the occasion.