PUNCHINELLO listens in vain for the swan song of SUMNER, and looks longingly, without being gratified by the spectacle of the oratorical funeral pyre of NYE.

Often it ran level with the roofs of vague, far-stretching acres of houses houses vile and frowsy, and smoking like pyres in the dank air.

It is enjoined in the Shastras that the bodies of the dead should be consumed in a fire fed by logs of bael-tree; but where it is not procurable in sufficient quantity, the natives compound with their consciences by lighting the funeral pyre with a branch from the bael-tree.

A stranger, harbor'd there, made show Of force, full soon was he laid low; In the brief space of this wild fray, From coals, that strewn around us lay, The straw caught fire; 'tis blazing free, As funeral death-pyre for the three.

The whole village contributed wood to the pyre on which he perished, and the charred sticks were afterwards kept and planted in the fields on Walpurgis Day (the first of May) to preserve the wheat from blight and mildew.

The exertion of dragging the seven dead rats to the funeral pyre by the nettle grove left him bathed in perspiration, and Cossar pointed out the obvious physical reaction of whisky to save him from the otherwise inevitable chill.

The apotheosis of Quetzalcoatl from the embers of his funeral pyre to the planet Venus has led several distinguished students of Mexican mythology to identify his whole history with the astronomical relations of this bright star.

55 So when thy King, Assyria, fierce and proud, Three human victims to his idol vow'd; Rear'd a vast pyre before the golden shrine Of sulphurous coal, and pitch-exsuding pine; Loud roar the flames, the iron nostrils breathe, 60