mmortal, a peculiarity proverbial. Hence we see the number of legacies
and fortunes left on condition that the legatee shall take the name and
style of the testator, by which device we provide for the continuance
of the sounds that formed our names, and endow them with an estate, that
they may be repeated with proper respect. In the _Memoirs of an Heiress_
all the difficulties of the plot turn on the necessity imposed by a
clause in her uncle's will that her future husband should take the
family name of Beverley. Poor Cecilia! What delicate perplexities she
was thrown into by this improvident provision; and with what minute,
endless, intricate distresses has the fair authoress been enabled to
harrow up the reader on this account! There was a Sir Thomas Dyot in the
reign of Charles II. who left the whole range of property which forms
Dyot Street, in St. Giles's, and the neighbourhood, on the sole and
express condition that it should be appropriated entirely to that sort
of buildings, and to the reception of that sort of population, which
still keeps undisputed, undivided possession of it. The name was changed
the other day to George Street as a more genteel appellation, which, I
should think, is an indirect forfeiture of the estate. This Sir
Thomas Dyot I should be disposed to put upon the list of old English
worthies--as humane, liberal, and no flincher from what he took in
his head. He was no common-place man in his line. He was the best
commentator on that old-fashioned text--'The foxes have holes, and the
birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay
his head.' We find some that are curious in the mode in which they
shall be buried, and others in the place. Lord Camelford had his
remains buried under an ash tree that grew on one of the mountains in
Switzerland; and Sir Francis Bourgeois had a little mausoleum built for
him in the college at Dulwich, where he once spent a pleasant, jovial
day with the masters and wardens.(4) It is, no doubt, proper to attend,
except for strong reasons to the contrary, to these sort of requests;
for by breaking faith with the dead we loosen the confidence of the
living. Besides, there is a stronger argument: we sympathise with the
dead as well as with the living, and are bound to them by the most
sacred of all ties, our own involuntary follow-feeling with others!

Thieves, as a last donation, leave advice to their friends, physicians a
nostrum, authors a manuscri