Not very long since, a small farmer in a little village in Somersetshire, who prided himself on his cheeses, in a fit of unwonted generosity--for he was a penurious man--sent to her majesty Queen Victoria a prime cheese. A person given to practical jokes knowing this, bought an eighteen-penny gilt chain, and sent it in a letter, purporting to be from her majesty, appointing him her "well beloved" mayor of the village, in the document exalted into a corporate town, but whereof he, the said mayor, formed the sole body and whole authority. The ignorant poor man swallowed the bait, and called the village together; gave an ox to be roasted whole, and walked at the head of the invited procession, wearing his chain of office; and for several weeks exhibited the insignia of royal favour, the chain and royal autograph, at church and at markets. It is a doubt if he be yet undeceived, and lowered from his imaginary brief authority. We know not what our farmer would say to the use to which the Sardes apply their cheeses, or what may be expected from a free trade with them in this article; but we learn that so plentiful was cheese in the Donori district, in 1842, that some of it was used for manuring the ground, which practice would amount to throwing it away, for they are not given to any industrial means of agriculture. So fertile was Sardinia under the Romans, that, in the last years of the second Punic war, corn was so abundant that it was sold for the mere price of the freight. Should the reader be curious to know the result of this cheapness, he may see it in the present condition of Sardinia compared with its former, a population diminished from about two millions to about five hundred and twenty-four thousand, and full three quarters of the land uncultivated.
The "Attitu," or custom of mourning around the body of the dead, will bring to mind, to those who have witnessed such a ceremony, the Irish hovel. The "Conducti" are ever more vehement than the _verè plorantibus_. The word Attitu is supposed to be derived from the _atat_ of the Romans, but it was not an original word of their language, nor may it have been so with the Greeks, from whom they took it. The Sarde Attitadores are thus described, and the description perfectly answers to exhibitions we have witnessed in some remote parts of Ireland. "They wear black stuff gowns, with a species of Capucin hood, and, maintaining a perfect silence, assume the air of total ignorance as to there having been a death in the family, till, suddenly and accidentally seeing the dead body, they simultaneously commence a weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, accompanied with groans and ejaculations,--tearing their hair, throwing themselves on the ground, raising their clenched fists maniacally to heaven, and carrying on the attitudes and expressions of real anguish." It is curious that the "ailinon" of the Greeks is traced to the Phoenicians, and, on the authority of Athenæus, "Linus was a mythological personage, who gave his name to a song of a mournful character." It is said that the Phoenician "Lin" signifies complaint.