is irresistible sentiment.
Fifteen centuries ago it was charged against the Christians of that day
that they appeased the shades of the dead with feasts like the
Gentiles. In the Penitentials we find the prohibition of burning grains
where a man had died. In the _Indiculus superstitionum et Paganiarum_
among the Saxons complaint is made of the too ready canonisation of the
dead; and the Church seems to have been much troubled to keep within
reasonable bounds this tendency to indiscriminate apotheosis. At length
a compromise was effected, and the Feast of All Souls converted to
pious uses that wealth of sentiment which previously was lavished on
the dead" (_The Aryan Household_, p. 60). And, to close this short note
upon an important subject, Mr. Metcalfe, speaking of the old poetic
literature of the pagan English, says: "It was kidnapped, and its
features so altered and disguised as not to be recognisable. It was
supplanted by Christian poetical legends and Bible lays produced in
rivalry of the popular lays of their heathen predecessors. Finding that
the people would listen to nothing but these old lays, the missionaries
affected their spirit and language, and borrowed the words and phrases
of heathenism" (Metcalfe's _Englishman and Scandinavian_, p. 155).

[458] For some reason not apparent in the document itself, Mrs. S. C.
Lomas, the editor of this report, says this interesting letter gives "a
curious and evidently prejudiced description of the religious houses
and observances." See preface to _Hist. MSS. Com. Report on the MSS. of
Chequers Court, Bucks_, p. x.

[459] _Hist. MSS. Com., Chequers Court Papers_, pp. 171-2.

[460] _Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Italy_, p. 1.

[461] _Corpus insc. Lat._, i. 409; and _cf._ Cumont's _Mysteries of
Mithra_ (1903).

[462] Leland, _Etruscan Roman Remains_ (1892).

[463] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Bury), ii. 15.

[464] _Decline and Fall_, ii. 17.

[465] Evidence is scattered far and wide in most of the reliable
studies in folklore. Two special books may be mentioned. A great
storehouse of examples is to be found in _The Popish Kingdoms_, by
Thomas Naogeorgus, Englyshed by Barnabe Googe, 1570, a new edition of
which was published by Mr. R. C. Hope in 1880; and Mr. H. M. Bower has
exhaustively examined one important Italian ceremony in his _The
Elevation and Procession of the Ceri at Gubbio_, published by the
Folklore Society in 1897.

CHA