n the tomb and
enjoyed the perfume of the flowers? An American traveller, writing
from Vienna on All Saints' Day, in 1855, describes the avenues of
the great cemetery filled with people hanging festoons of flowers
on the tombstones, and placing burning candles of wax on the
graves, and kneeling in devotion; it being their childish belief,
he says, that their prayers on this day have efficacy to release
their deceased relatives from purgatory, and that the dim taper
flickering on the sod lights the unbound soul to its heavenly
home. Of course these rites are not literal expressions of literal
beliefs, but are

31 Andree, North America, p. 246.

32 Republic, book v. ch. 15.

33 R. Taylor, New Zealand, ch. 7.

34 Meiners, Kritische Geschichte der Religionen, buch iii. absch.
1.

symbols of ideas, emblems of sentiments, figurative and inadequate
shadows of a theological doctrine, although, as is well known,
there is, among the most ignorant persons, scarcely any
deliberately apprehended distinction between image and entity,
material representation and spiritual verity.

If a member of the Oneida tribe died when they were away from
home, they buried him with great solemnity, setting a mark over
the grave; and whenever they passed that way afterwards they
visited the spot, singing a mournful song and casting stones upon
it, thus giving symbolic expression to their feelings. It would be
absurd to suppose this song an incantation to secure the repose of
the buried brave, and the stones thrown to prevent his rising; yet
it would not be more incredible or more remote from the facts than
many a commonly current interpretation of barbarian usages. An
amusing instance of error well enforcing the need of extreme
caution in drawing inferences is afforded by the example of those
explorers who, finding an extensive cemetery where the aborigines
had buried all their children apart from the adults, concluded
they had discovered the remains of an ancient race of pigmies! 35

The influence of unspeculative affection, memory, and sentiment
goes far towards accounting for the funeral ritual of the
barbarians. But it is not sufficient. We must call in further aid;
and that aid we find in the arbitrary conceits, the poetic
associations, and the creative force of unregulated fancy and
imagination. The poetic faculty which, supplied with materials by
observation and speculation, constructed the complex mythologies
of Egypt and Greec