used once to be preserved and affectionately tended, are derived, I believe, most of the household gods of the world--the Lares and Penates of the Romans, the huacas of the Peruvians, the teraphim of the Semites. How absolutely image and ancestor are identified we can see among the Tenimber Islanders, with whom “the _matmate_ are the spirits of their ancestors which are worshipped as guardian spirits or household gods. They are supposed to enter the house through an opening in the roof, and to take up their abode temporarily in the skulls, or in images of wood or ivory, in order to partake of the offerings.” A few more facts in the same direction may help to bring out in still stronger relief this close equivalence of the corpse and the image. A New Guinea mother keeps the mummied body of her child, and carries it about with her; whereas a West African mother, living in a tribe where terror of the dead has induced the practice of burial, makes {134}a little image of her lost darling out of a gourd or calabash, wraps it in skins, and feeds it or puts it to sleep like a living baby. Bastian saw Indian women in Peru, who had lost an infant, carrying about on their backs a wooden doll to represent it. At a somewhat higher level, “the spiritual beings of the Algonquins,” says Dr. Tylor, to whom I owe not a few of these instances, “were represented by, and in language completely identified with, the carved wooden heads” (note this point) “or more complete images, to which worship and sacrifice were offered.” In all these instances we see clearly, I think, the course of the genesis of household deities. In Siam, the ashes of the dead are similarly moulded into Buddhist images, which are afterwards worshipped as household gods. Mr. Herbert Spencer has collected several interesting examples some of which I will borrow, as showing incidentally how much the growth of the idol or image depends upon such abstraction of the real body for burial or its equivalent. While a deceased king of Congo is being embalmed, a figure is set up in the palace to represent him, and is daily furnished with meat and drink. When Charles VI. of France was buried, “over the coffin was an image of the late king, bearing a rich crown of gold and diamonds, and holding two shields.... This image was dressed with cloth of gold.... In this state was he solemnly carried to the church of Notre Dame.” Madame de Motteville says of the father of the great Condé, “The effigy of this prince was waited upon for three days, as was customary”--forty days having been the original time during which food was supplied to such effigies at the usual hours. Monstrelet describes a like figure used at the burial of Henry V. of England: and the Westminster Abbey images already noticed belong to the same category.