Abridge.

_Woman, Lines on._--Can any of your correspondents inform me who was the
author of the following lines:--

"She was ----
But words would fail to tell her worth: think
What a woman ought to be,
And she was that."

They are to be found on several tombstones throughout the country.

SCRUTATOR.

{144}

* * * * *

Replies.

THE EPISCOPAL MITRE AND PAPAL TIARA.

(Vol. iii., p. 62.)

In answer to the question of an "INQUIRER" respecting the origin of the
peculiar form and first use of the episcopal mitre, I take the liberty of
suggesting that it will be found to be of Oriental extraction, and to have
descended from that country, either directly, or through the medium of
other nations, to the ecclesiastics of Christian Rome. The writers of the
Romish, as well as Reformed Churches, now admit, that most, if not all, of
the external symbols, whether of dress or ceremonial pageantry, exhibited
by the Roman Catholic priesthood, were adopted from the Pagans, under the
plea of being "indifferent in themselves, and applicable as symbolical in
their own rites and usages" (Marangoni, _Delle cose gentili e profane
trasportate nel uso ed ornamento delle chiesi_); in the same manner as many
Romish customs were retained at the Reformation for the purpose of inducing
the Papists to "come in," and conform to the other changes then made
(Southey, _History of the Church_). Thus, while the disciples of Dr. Pusey
extract their forms and symbols from the practices of Papal Rome, the
disciples of the Pope deduce theirs from the practices of Pagan Rome.

With this preface I proceed to show that the episcopal _mitre_ and the
papal _tiara_ are respectively the copies each of a distinct head-dress
originally worn by the kings of Persia and the conterminous countries, and
by the chiefs of their priesthood, the Magi. The nomenclature alone
indicates a foreign extraction. It comes to us through the Romans from the
Greeks; both of which nations employed the terms [Greek: mitra], Lat.
_mitra_, and [Greek: tiara], Lat. _tiara_, to designate two different kinds
of covering for the head in use amongst the Oriental races, each one of a
distinct and peculiar form, though as being foreigners, and consequently
not possessing the technical accuracy of a native, they not unfrequently
confound the two words, and apply them indiscriminately to both objects.
Strictly speaking, t