any miles to look upon
the exhumation of the remains of some one famous in his time, whether
for his vices, his virtues, his knowledge, his talents, or his heroism;
and, if this feeling exist in the minds of the educated and refined in a
sublimated shape, which lends to it grace and dignity, we may look for
it among the vulgar and the ignorant, taking only a grosser and meaner
form, in accordance with their habits of thought. The rude materials, of
which the highest and noblest feelings of educated minds are formed,
will be found amongst the most grovelling and base; and so this vulgar
curiosity, which, combined with other feelings, prompted an ignorant and
illiterate mob to exhume Miles, the once fat butcher, in a different
form tempted the philosophic Hamlet to moralise upon the skull of
Yorick.

And it was wonderful to see how, when these people had made up their
minds to carry out the singularly interesting, but, at the same,
fearful, suggestion, they assumed to themselves a great virtue in so
doing--told each other what an absolute necessity there was, for the
public good, that it should be done; and then, with loud shouts and
cries concerning the vampyre, they proceeded in a body to the village
churchyard, where had been lain, with a hope of reposing in peace, the
bones of their ancestors.

A species of savage ferocity now appeared to have seized upon the crowd,
and the people, in making up their minds to do something which was
strikingly at variance with all their preconceived notions of right and
wrong, appeared to feel that it was necessary, in order that they might
be consistent, to cast off many of the decencies of life, and to become
riotous and reckless.

As they proceeded towards the graveyard, they amused themselves by
breaking the windows of the tax-gatherers, and doing what passing
mischief they could to the habitations of all who held any official
situation or authority.

This was something like a proclamation of war against those who might
think it their duty to interfere with the lawless proceedings of an
ignorant multitude. A public-house or two, likewise, _en route_, was
sacked of some of its inebriating contents, so that, what with the
madness of intoxication, and the general excitement consequent upon the
very nature of the business which took them to the churchyard, a more
wild and infuriated multitude than that which paused at two iron gates
which led into the sanctuary of that church coul