THE DANCE OF DEATH.

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CHAPTER I.

Personification of Death, and other modes of representing itamong the Ancients, and during the Middle Ages. — Er-roneous notions respecting Death. — Monumental absurdities.— Allegorical pageant of the Dance of Death representedin early times in churches and cemeteries. — Introduction ofthe infernal, or dance of Macaber*

HE manner in which the poets andartists of antiquity have symbolized orpersonified Death, has excited consi-derable discussion ; and the variousopinions of Lessing, Herder, Klotz,and other controversialists, have onlytended to demonstrate that the ancientsadopted many different modes to ac-complish this purpose. Some writers have maintained thatthey exclusively represented Death as a mere skeleton ;whilst others have contended that this figure, so frequentlyto be found upon gems and sepulchral monuments, wasnever intended to personify the extinction of human life,but only as a simple and abstract representation. They

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