_North Sides of Churchyards unconsecrated_ (Vol. ii., p. 55.).--In illustration of, not in answer to, Mr. Sansom's inquiry, I beg to offer the following statement. During a long series of years an average of about 150 corpses has been annually deposited in Ecclesfield churchyard, which has rendered it an extremely crowded cemetery. But, notwithstanding these frequent interments, my late sexton told me that he remembered when there was scarcely one grave to the north of the church, it being popularly considered that only suicides, unbaptised persons, and still-born children ought to be buried there. However, when a vicar died about twenty-seven years ago, unlike his predecessors, who had generally been buried in the chancel, he was laid in a tomb on the north side of the churchyard, adjoining the vicarage. From this time forward the situation lost all its evil reputation amongst the richer inhabitants of the parish, who have almost entirely occupied it with family vaults. Whether the prejudice against the north side of our churchyard arose from an idea that it was unconsecrated, I cannot tell but I suspect that, from inherited dislike, the poor are still indisposed towards it. When the women of the village have to come to the vicarage after nightfall, they generally manage to bring a companion, and hurry past the gloomy end of the north transept as if they knew "that close behind Some frightful fiend did tread." I cannot help fancying that the objection is attributable to a notion that evil spirits haunt the spot in which, possibly from very early times, such interments took place as my sexton described. As a suggestion towards a full solution of this popular superstition, I would ask whether persons who formerly underwent ecclesiastical excommunication were customarily buried on the north side of churchyards? Alfred Gatty. Ecclesfield, June 28. 1850. I can only give from recollection a statement of a tradition, that when Jesus Christ died he turned his head towards the south; and so, ever since, the south side of a church has the pre-eminence. There generally is the bishop's throne, and the south aisle of ancient basilicas was appropriated to men. Simple observation shows that the supposed sanctity extends to the churchyard,--for there the tombstones lie thickest. I find that my source of information for the {127} tradition was Cockerell's last lecture on Architecture, _Athenæum_ for 1843, p. 187. col. 3. A.J.H. "_Men are but Children_," &c.--R.G. (Vol. ii., p. 22.) will find the line about which he inquires in Dryden's _All for Love; or, The World well Lost_, Act iv. Sc. 1. Dolabella (_loq._): "Men are but children of a larger growth, Our appetites as apt to change as theirs, And full as craving too, and full as vain." J.R.M. King's College, London, July 12. 1850.