Doubtless the ghoul (for he that rifles tombs is none other) who perpetrated this enormity described himself as an archæologist. Possibly he was of gentle birth and had received a University education. If so, so much the greater his crime, for he could not plead ignorance. Surely no seriously minded person can urge that the knowledge thus gained as to ancient methods of burial, age of the remains, and so on, warranted such sacrilege.[42] We can only hope that the chieftain was granted five minutes with the archæologist when that individual at length entered the land of shadows. Doubtless the archæologist had no qualms whatever, and slept soundly in the belief that by his 'researches' he had wrought great things for mankind; but when he encountered the chieftain it is unlikely that they would see eye to eye. 'Happy are they who deal so with men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next,' and happier still are they who deal so reverently with the earthly memorials of the dead, that there may be many to speak in their favour when they approach the Great Tribunal.
This particular form of irreverence, however, has been a byword throughout all the ages; civilisation and education have done little to check it, possibly because the romantic spirit which forbids such crimes is born, not made. King Arthur's bones were dug up in the twelfth century. 'Mummie is become Merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharoah is sold for balsoms,' wrote Sir Thomas Browne five hundred years later. In 1788 the massive stone coffin which held the remains of our illustrious King Alfred was discovered facing the High Altar at Hyde Abbey, Winchester, whither they had been translated in 1110. The coffin was broken in pieces, the bones found in it were scattered, and the lead enveloping the remains was sold by the workmen. A stone from the wrecked tomb, bearing the name ÆLFRED, was carried off to Cumberland as a curio. Hyde Abbey was razed to make way for a county Bridewell. 'At almost every stroke of the mattock,' relates an eye-witness, 'some antient sepulchre or other was violated.' Examples of such desecrations can be multiplied without number. The Great Alaric was wise indeed when he had the course of a river changed so that his bones, when lying at the bottom of it, might never be disturbed.