ERRATA.

SOVEREIGNS.

SARDANAPALUS, the last king of the Assyrians, who died 820 B.C., surpassed all his predecessors in effeminacy, luxury, and cowardice. He never went out of his palace, but spent all his time among a company of women, dressed and painted like them, and employed like them at the distaff. He placed all his happiness and glory in the possession of immense treasures, in feasting and rioting, and indulging himself in all the most infamous and criminal pleasures. He ordered two verses to be put upon his tomb, which imported, "that he carried away with him all that he had eaten, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, but left all the rest behind him." "An Epitaph," says Aristotle, "fit for a hog."

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After the death of Sardanapalus, a statue was erected to him which represented him in the posture of a dancer, with an inscription upon it, in which he addressed himself to the spectators in these words, Eat, drink, and be merry; everything else is nothing:" an inscription very suitable to the above epitaph he himself had ordered to be put upon his monument.-Anct. Hist.

NITOCRIS, the wife of Evil-Merodach, and mother of Belshazzar (Dan. v.), is that queen who raised so many noble edifices in Babylon. She caused her own monument to be placed over one of the most remarkable gates of the city, with an inscription dissuading her successors from touching the treasures laid up in it, without the most urgent and indispensable necessity. The tomb remained closed till the reign of Darius, who, upon breaking it open, instead of those immense treasures he had flattered himself with discovering, found nothing but the following inscription :-"If thou hadst not an insatiable thirst after money, and a most sordid avaricious soul, thou wouldst never have broken open the monuments of the dead."

B.C.

MAUSOLUS, king of Caria, died about six centuries Artemisia, his widow, gathered his ashes, and caused the bones to be beaten in a mortar; she mingled some of the powder every day in her drink, till she had drunk it all off; desiring, by that means, to make her own body the sepulchre of her husband. She survived him only two years, and her grief did not end but with her life.-Ancient History.

CYRUS, king of Persia, died 529 B.C., and ordered the following inscription to be engraven on his tomb, as an admonition to all men of the approach of death, "O man, whosoever thou art, and whencesoever thou comest, know that thou wilt come to the same condition that I am now in. I am Cyrus, who brought the empire to the Persians. Do not envy me, I beseech thee, this little piece of ground which covereth my body."

DARIUS I., king of Persia, son of Hystaspes, when dying, desired to have the following epitaph engraved

on his tomb:-"Here lies King Darius, who was able to drink many bottles of wine without staggering." He died 485 B.C.

An Extraordinary Phoenician Inscription:

It was recently announced that the French had obtained possession of a very curious sarcophagus of a king, at Beyrouth, bearing a very extraordinary inscription in Phoenician, and that it was to be forwarded to the Louvre, at Paris. The duke of Luynes has made the following translation of the inscription:- "In the month of Bul, in the fourteenth year of my reign, I, Ezman Azar, king of the Sidonians, son of Tebunad, also king of the Sidonians, son of Amestris, my mother, high-priestess of Esther (Star of Venus), at Babylon, spoke thus. In the flower of my youth, in the midst of my wives, perfumed and *** (illegible) I was carried off by death. From the funeral vault in which my bones repose, and which I have built myself, I adjure all dynasties, all generations, and every man, not to violate the asylum of my repose, not to open my coffin, not to place any weight on its lid, not to take any of the offerings there deposited. *** By the side of me is also the tomb of Amestris, my mother, high-priestess of starte, at Babylon, who caused to be built the Temple of Baal, at Babylon; and also of Elnaca, who made magnificent presents to the temple of Dan. *** I devote to malediction any dynasty, any generation, or any man, who may violate my tomb, or who may take off the lid of it, or touch the offerings deposited there. May his marriage bed be sterile, may my malediction fall on his family for ever, through all his posterity! May they be extirpated from the earth, and may it not be permitted to him to bury his mother! for I, Ezman Azar, king of the Sidonians, son of Tebunad, king of the Sidonians, son of Amestris, my mother, high-priestess of Esther, at Babylon." *** rest of the inscription cannot be made out. Newspapers, 1855.

"Sufficit huic tumulus, cui non sufficeret orbis."

The

CHARLEMAGNE died A.D. 814, in his 74th year, and lies buried in the cathedral at Aix-la-chapelle; the spot being marked by a simple inscription on the pavement: "Carolo Magno."

FASTRADA, the queen of Charlemagne, died A.D. 794, and was buried in a church, now destroyed. A monument to her memory is in Mayence cathedral. The inscription on the stone which covered her remains has been translated literally in the Illustrated London News, by a correspondent, and is as follows:

"Fastradana the pious, called the wife of Charles, Beloved by Christ, lies under this marble, In the year seven hundred and ninety-four, Which words the muse does not permit to include the number in metre.

O Pius King, whom the Virgin bore,

Altho' she is here turning into ashes,

May her spirit be heir of that country which knows no sorrow."

In the cathedral church of Magdeburg, is still to be seen the tomb of OTHO THE GREAT, emperor of Germany, who died 972-3, aged 60, with an inscription upon it to the following effect :—

"Beneath this marble tomb a monarch lies,

Whose loss a three-fold share of grief must claim; Religion's friend—a ruler brave and wise—

His weeping country's highest joy and fame."

Readings in Biography.

On the tomb of HENRY II., at Fontevraud, who died A.D. 1189:

"Rex Henricus eram, mihi plurima Regna subegi. Multiplicique modo, Duxque Comesque fui