divinity; would have caroused to the memory of the dead in the most religious spirit of sack, and have sent round whole flagons of surest consolation. Alas! this great, this seeming invincible spirit, this mighty wit, with jests all but rich enough to laugh Death from his purpose—to put him civilly aside with a quip, bidding him to pass on and strike at leaner bosoms,—he himself, though with “three fingers on the ribs,” had been hit; and he, who seemed made to live for ever, an embodied principle of fleshly enjoyment,—he, the great Sir John— “He was dead and nailèd in his chest.” Others, too, passed away with their great dominator, were wanting at the ceremonial. Where was he, with nose enshrining jests richer to us than rubies? Truly liberal, yet most unfortunate spirit, hapless Bardolph; where, when Sir Hugh was laid upon the lap of his mother earth, oh! where wert thou? Where was that glorious feature that, had the burying been at the dead time of night, would have outshone the torches? Where was that all-rich—all-lovely nose? Alack! it may be in the maws of French falcons; its luckless owner throttled on the plains of Agincourt for almost the smallest theft; hung up by fellest order of the Fifth Henry—of his old boon companion, his brother robber on the field of Gadshill. And could Harry march from the plain with laurel on his brow and leave the comrade of his youth—his fellow-footpad—with neck mortally cut “with edge of penny cord”? Should such a chaplet have been intertwined with such hemp? The death of Bardolph is a blot—a foul, foul blot on the ’scutcheon of Agincourt. But let us pass the ingratitude and tyranny of kings, to dwell wholly upon the burial of Sir Hugh. Who shall say that all the spirits with whom the parson was wont to recreate himself,—to counsel, to quarrel,—who shall say that they did not all mingle in the procession, all once again pass through the streets of ancient Windsor? The broad shadow of Sir John, arm-in-arm with the spirit of Mrs Page,—Bardolph and Nym, descended from their gibbets, new from the plains of France, to make melancholy holiday in Berkshire,—learned Dr Caius, babbling Quickly, and Pistol, her broken, war-worn husband, kicked down the tavern stairs, where in his old days he served as drawer, and was killed,—and Shallow, immortal Shallow, his lean ghost fluttering with a sense of office,—who shall say that all these did not crowd about the coffin of good Sir Hugh, and, as he was laid in the grave, give him a smiling welcome to his everlasting habitation? Let us not, in this day of light, be charged with superstition, if in these pages—perpetual as adamant—we register our belief, a belief mingling in our very blood, that all these illustrious ghosts followed, and, with their dim majesty, ennobled the procession,—albeit, to the eyes of the uninitiate, none but the living did service to the dead.