Jump to content

Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/332

From Wikisource
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
318
GARIBALDI AND THE TIBER.

where he will await the arrival of the coffin. The empress and ladies will move by the same secluded roads to the same destination; and it will be the duty of the princes, ministers, and officials to accompany the bier on horseback. On reaching the end of the first stage, the coffin will be placed in the centre of the hall of the "travelling-palace." In front of it will be put a sacrificial stand and a table, and on the left and right the posthumous tablet and the seal. At sunset the emperor will bow before the coffin, and will pour out libations. He will then retire, and the door will be shut.

As the distances traversed each day are but short, probably three or four days will be spent on the road, and on each the same ceremonial will be observed, not forgetting the adoration of the local officials, who, at every hundred Chinese miles, will salute the coffin on their knees on the right-hand side of the road. On arriving at the tombs the emperor will pay his respects to the graves of his ancestors, while the empress and the concubines will take up their places at the mausoleum. He will then receive the coffin on his knees, and will personally superintend its removal to the "Hall of Felicity," where it will be deposited with much solemnity in company with the tablet and seal and abundance of viands, together with ninety thousand paper bills, and the baskets containing the cap and clothes of the late monarch. Certain rites will then be performed by the emperor, and the viands and paper bills and the baskets containing the cap and clothes will be burned with fire. And now the closing scene approaches, and officers will be appointed to announce to heaven and earth, the ancestral temple, and the god of the soil, that yet another ruler of the "Eighteen Provinces" is to be laid with his forefathers in the wooded valley among the Eastern Hills.

Outside the gate of the "Square City," and adjoining it, the Board of Works will erect a wicker hall in which the "dragon hearse" will stand, and a lacquered bridge from the "Square City" to the gate of the mausoleum. On this a wooden tramway will be placed leading directly to the dais in the "original palace," or the sepulchre. With due ceremony and with many prostrations the coffin will then be removed to the "dragon hearse" in the wicker hall. On the following day, amid the sound of woe and in the presence of kneeling crowds of all the great and noble of the land, the dragon hearse will pass along the tramway into the "original palace," and the Imperial remains will be placed in "eternal repose" on the dais. And now the "stone door" of the sepulchre will close on the dead. The spirits hovering round the other tombs and the god of the soil will be informed that the last ceremony has been completed. The wearied emperor will perform the last sacrificial rites, and will then return to the capital to go through the daily routine of official business and wearying ceremonies until it shall be his turn to find eternal repose within the stone door of a sepulchre in the Eastern Hills.




From The Spectator.

GARIBALDI AND THE TIBER.

Few will be inclined to quarrel with the latest pronunciamiento of the Italian patriot. Clerical and Liberal may alike welcome his exchange of the sword for the pruning-hook. From time immemorial the Tiber has defied the efforts of senate and people, of pagan emperor and of Christian pontiff, but at length it seems that modern science must prevail, and sentence of divorce be pronounced against the "uxorius amnis." For such a work — the diversion of the river at a point thirty miles from its mouth — the enthusiasm of the Italians must be awakened, and for this task Garibaldi is of all men the most fitted. But enthusiasm unaided will hardly dig through the Campagna, and the navvy requires more solid sustenance than patriotic fervour. Capital is the one thing needful, and at the same time, perhaps, the thing most difficult to obtain in Italy itself. It is to England, therefore, that the general looks for material as well as moral support. In England, the progress of such an enterprise must surely be watched with interest. Without doubt, many a disappointed tourist has condemned the Tiber as an insignificant and muddy stream, and looked with contempt on "the noble river that rolls by the towers of Rome." But on the other hand, many Englishmen, though knowing Italy from books alone, could trace the windings of the Tiber from the beech forest in which it rises to the marshy shore where its turbid current mingles with the blue waters of the Mediterranean. In view, however, of the important works now about to be commenced, the sympathy of the scholar will