have no intelligence to give, whether beauty, genius, or virtue,
informed the animated clay. A tooth of Homer or Milton will not be
distinguished from one of a common mortal; nor a bone of Alexander
acquaint us with more of his character than one of Bucephalus.
Though the dead be unconcerned, the living are neither benefited nor
improved: decency is violated, and a kind of instinctive sympathy
infringed, which, though it ought not to overpower reason, ought not
without it, and to no purpose, to be superseded." Notwithstanding
the right feeling shewn in this passage, it is quite sufficient to
condemn Capel Lofft as a Philister. Let us for a moment examine
some of these very eloquent assertions. Agreeing as I cordially do
with his wish, that neither superstition, affectation, whatever that
may mean, idle curiosity, or avarice, were the motives which actuate
those who molest the relics of the dead, I cannot allow that neither
dust and ashes, bones, nor teeth, have any intelligence to give us;
nor yet that by the reverential scrutiny of those relics the living
can be neither benefited nor improved. All that depends upon the
intelligence of the scrutineer. Doubtless your Philister would turn
over the skull or the bones, or make hay with the dust, just as
Peter Bell could see nothing in a primrose but a weed in flower.
What message a bone or a weed may have for the man or the race
depends wholly upon the recipient. Your Shakespeare or Goethe, your
Owen or Huxley, would find in it an intelligible language; while
your Capel Lofft would denounce what he found there as dirt and
indecency. How true is the proverb of Syr Oracle Mar-text: "To the
wise all things are wise." In the case of Schiller, the skull spoke
for itself, and claimed to be that of Schiller; the bones, like
those in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, aggregated themselves around
their head, and submitted to an accurate articulation; and the teeth
gave their evidence, too, at least the place of one, which was not