Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851. Various

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          Ah, golden lettered hope!—ah, dolorous doom!

          Yet mid the common death, where all is cold,

          And mildewed pride in desolation dwells,

          A few great immortalities of old

          Stand brightly forth—not tombes but living shrines,

          Where from high sainte or martyr virtue wells,

          Which on the living yet work miracles,

      Spreading a relic wealth richer than golden mines.

      Attached to it, it will be seen, are the initials J.M. and the date 1627. Is it possible that this may be an early and neglected sonnet of Milton? and yet, could Milton have seriously perpetrated the pun in the second line?

      BURYING IN CHURCH WALLS

      MR. W. DURRANT COOPER has mentioned some instances of burials in the walls of churches; it is not however clear whether in these the monument, or coffin lid, is in the inside or the outside of the wall.

      Stone coffin lids, with and without effigies, are very frequently found placed under low arches hollowed in the wall in the interior of the church: tombs placed in the exterior of the wall are much less common; and the singularity of their position, leads one to look for some peculiar reason for it. Tradition often accounts for it by such stories as those mentioned by MR. COOPER. Such is the case with a handsome canopied tomb (I think with an effigy) on the south side of the choir of the cathedral of Lichfield, where we are told that the person interred died under censure of the church. Other instances which I have noticed, are, at—