him that I am able to write thiswhen, I say, he told me that I might keep on the said mustard-plaster, if I pleased, till I saw him next day, I, who had enjoyed such good health that I never had had such a thing in my life, and knew not what a mustardplaster was, said, in the innocence of my heart, that, to oblige him, I would keep it on for a week if he wished it. But, oh! tortures, all that ever were or will be, are centered in that thing called a mustard-plaster! One hour was torture beyond description. Whether it was that it was upon the tender and afflicted part, or that my constitution has a particular antipathy to such "ticklers," as my worthy friend called them, I know not; but never did I ever feel such torment as that gave me-ay, for a day and a half at least after it was off. Now, after this pleasant little episode of the mustard conflagration, the scenes, the remembrance of which makes the horrors of Milton and Dante tame, let us pass on to my second dream. I thought I was lying on a sofa. A servant entered, and announced that a woman wished to see me. I desired her to be shown up, supposing it to be some parochial affair. With this idea, the furniture of my room was gone, all but the sofa, and I was in an up-stair room of the miserable old parish poor-house. I arose to receive the woman, whose steps I heard upon the stairs. She entered, and we met in the middle of the room. She was dressed in an old black bonnet and red cloak, a gaunt haggard creature whom I had never seen before. She instantly caught hold of me, and wrestled with me, and, as I was very weak, threw me on the floor. Then I beheld such a change come over her. She threw off her cloak and her bonnet, and was instantly no longer the woman-but my friend O, my amiable friend O-, and how altered! His features assumed the most terrific aspect of rage, and his hair stood on end with fury, and his gesture was violent in the extreme. Now my worthy friend has a wooden leg. He gave a violent turn with his whole body, and jumped upon me, prostrate as I was on the floor, and with the end of his wooden leg pegged upon the very spot where I had had the mustardplaster; he gave a wonderful pirouette upon me, laughing and grinning; and continued the action, with repeated jumps, which put me in agony; he

spun like a top. Such torture could not last long, and so I awoke. And here ends my experience of laudanum. I very soon recovered from my illness, of which, my dear Eusebius, I send you these particulars, as you have expressed much anxiety on my account. I shall not soon forget my friend "Forty per cent"-and I am so thoroughly impressed with a sense of funeral follies and funeral rogueries, that one object of this letter is to entreat you, my dear Eusebius, to see, when my day shall come, that I be quietly and unostentatiously laid in the ground. I would return to it as a child, wearied with his trifling sports, to his mother's breast. I care not with how little cost; it is not my desire to enrich an undertaker by my death. And I beg you will signify to my nearest relatives that for my part of the show I willingly dispense with all their outward marks of sorrowand that if they choose to put themselves and families into black, that they will do so to gratify themselves, and not to honour me. I have made calculations of what, according to the usual routine of these matters, my decease would cost my family, and find that the law and the undertaker might be considered as in part my heirs, which I by no means intend, and would provide against.

People may complain of the expense of living, when in reality they have more cause to complain, if they had any forethought, of the expense of dying. In fact death is treated as a crime, and subjects us both to "pains and penalties." Her Majesty loses a subject-so there must be a fine, without a recovery. Come into this world how we may, we are greatly taxed for the luxury of leaving it. We let the Government tax us high enough, but that we let the undertakers tax us besides, is certainly a wonderful folly. There are situations of distress, when a man can neither afford to live nor to die; and is haunted in his ailments by visions of the harpies that will come to defile or to consume his substance. What pretence can there be but our own easy sufferance for the abominable death-law, armed with probate duty and legacy tax, ever on the watch for spoliation? A man lies weak, helpless, incapable of exercising his industry and providing further means for his family-and because he is in this weak condition, you take away from

mis-spellings. One can fancy that on moonlight nights, when the shadows connect grave with grave, and stone with stone by their distinct lines, that gentle spirits come out of them, and, linked together in groups, seek amusement, their permitted hour in reading each other's histories, and humble praise. You know, Eusebius, I do not mock-there is no thought that is not in some sense a reality; and such an one, if it passes through the mind but a moment, awakens but a natural instinct, assuring us that even death is not all death. Somewhere the dead are, and I do not think we are the worse for bringing them nearest to ourselves. The country churchyard has, besides, another charm. It rarely witnesses the undertaker's pomp. They are mostly town ferrets-here, poor men are chiefly brought to their graves on poor men's shoulders; there is, in general, more decency than show, though the village carpenter will sometimes affect the undertaker; but it is in an humble way, and the consequences are not disastrous. There is a custom with country clubs that is not a bad one-every member, in case of death of wife or husband of any member, gives a shilling to the survivor. This does more than pay the funeral expenses, and as there is not, as yet, any very great ambition for display, it may be hoped that substantial comfort is offered by the custom-yes! substantial comfort, for it is a comfort that there may be a loaf, and somewhat more in the house, even after friends have broken bread, and temperately taken a parting draught, not taken without solemnity, and moral, and perhaps religious feeling. Bereavement is made worse by immediate deprivation of life's comforts. A little time is required for reconcilement to worse things, and this club aid is in general very timely, and it does not go to the undertaker. The sleeping family of a country churchyard, as I remarked, are generally undisturbed by grandeur, seeking to mingle its bones with the humble-it does happen sometimes. I remember well a procession which came from a considerable distance, which, though the parties concerned in it were not themselves grand, being too much left to the taste, and ambition too, of the undertaker, was somewhat conspicuous. I bore a part in it as mourner

we were two days upon the road,

and such two days! never shall I forget them. When we had left the town, it seemed as if all had thrown off even the semblance of sorrow. I was in the coach with the nearest relatives, who, very sensibly, endeavoured to make the journey as little dismal as might be, and succeeded; so that it was even pleasant. There was nothing to blame here; but the officials of the procession, the cavalcade, the undertaker, and his "merry-men all," made holiday all the way. It was observable enough, that, as fiddlers, on entering a village, strike up a note or two to show their calling, so on such occasions did our friend the "forty per cent" marshal his men, and for a few moments affect professional solemnity; but it did not always succeed, the officials did not go quite the straight way they were marshalled; and at the inns at night, I very much suspect the corpse was left to take care of itself; for "'twas merry in the hall." And upon one occasion I remember the procession was stopped before we entered a town-the mutes were missing, and when found, they had been strangely and ludicrously metamorphosed. The mutes had been with the liquids, and there was confusion in their tongues. We arrived at length, by the help of pretty fast driving; when, not too near town and village, without being weary of our journey, we deposited the deceased in a country church vault. And I recollect thinking as I stood near the ceremony, and marked the stupid unconcern of the crowds that came to see the show, that it was a needless waste of money to bring thither with so much pomp one whom not one of the village population had known, or would ever acknowledge by any sympathy, to be flesh of their flesh, or bone of their bone, no, nor even dust of their dust. And all this coldness and indecency, if I may so call it, was purchased at the cost of some hundreds of pounds, for the benefit of the Undertaker.

It is very evident that costly funerals have not, for their first object, respect for the dead. The pride of the living is more conspicuous in them. If, however, they were a solemn lesson to all men, if they were a public proclamation of death—a warning that all should take heed to their ways, it would be well. The burial-service is so; but it is precisely where the undertaker's work of parade commences

that there is an interruption of the solemnity, which is not taken up again until the last deposit in the earth, when the friend and the relative steal forward, and drop their tears into the grave, and the men of business keep in the back-ground-often even then indecorously to pack up their trappings for another show. And there is always sure to be something ridiculous mixed up with their proceedings. In the last case it was strikingly so to even the would-be mourners; for they were not thought of, and the appearance of wo was discarded a mile out of town, the pace quickened, and the resumption of the farce occasionally, made the whole a mockery. The dresses assumed; the mutes; hired mourners; the known circumstance that they have never perhaps seen the deceased, nor care one farthing for him or her, and often they know not which; their sleek appearance, bodily; their enormous eating and drinking; their impatience to shuffle up their paraphernalia; all these things, which are, besides, most adverse to any sympathy with the real mourners, have in themselves much of the ridiculous. The mummery before our eyes leaves us no time to think of the defunct; and if we do, it is to picture him, not as death, but as the mummers have tricked him up. The mind's eye can with difficulty penetrate the plumed enclosure. The very idea of the Trade of Wo, that all is hired for the occasion, is revolting to better feeling. Now it is the absence of this hired sorrow, and the room that is left to the imagination of the spectator, by the dress and sword of the soldier upon his coffin, to personify the dead-to see him, at a glance, the living and the deadthat makes a soldier's funeral exceedingly affecting. And here all that attend have been his companions, nor is there any pantomime trickery of dress and gesture. These are the very arms he wore, he handled-the boots, their hability, their fitness to the individual, all that which made them his, and him theirs, is not yet departed. We see the man more awfully than if we actually saw him lying in his coffin. The value of the individual man is stamped by the official military attendance, and serves as an epitaph of merit. The costliest funeral of the highest son of earth has nothing so affecting.

There is much more solemnity in

funerals abroad, where the Church steps in at once, and takes possession of the deceased as under its protection, under the sanctity of its religious authority; and if it makes an exhibition, it is with authority,—and this proclamation has holiness in it. All that is not ecclesiastical is kept out of sight. There is nothing intermediate between the deceased and the Church. The undertaker interferes not, intrudes not here to spoil all. Death, it is true, reigns for the hour, but religion triumphs. The Church certifies the triumph, and the resurrection. I well remember, my dear Eusebius, how much I was once affected by an exhibition of this kind, on the very first night of my entering Rome. It was dark; a singularly impressive cry attracted my attention. I was led by the sound some distance, I knew not where, for I was totally unacquainted with the city. I found myself in a large and long street, at the further end of which I could see many torches, and heard a constant repetition of the cry. I waited, leaning against a large pillar, until the procession should reach me. It did so, and passed in great order; first came the several religious orders, all bear. ing torches, as I should suppose, in number many hundreds. Then a single figure, a miserable friar, of some low order apparently, bare-footed, with his cord round his waist, bearing on his back a common coffinshell, totally unornamented; in fact, a few poor boards tacked together; immediately after him, a sumptuous and highly raised car or bier, on the front and lower part of which was a splendid display of armorial bearings, and above the body. It was a lady-of a fine person, and noble and handsome aspect. She lay extended; her hands joined as in prayer; her face, her hands, and her feet naked and uncovered; the rest of her person appeared in a stole of black, and such as showed the beauty of her form. She appeared to be about thirty years of age.

Her countenance I shall never forget; it was extremely placid, pale, had no sunken and worn character, as if disease had touched it. You could scarcely believe there was not consciousness remaining; or whether remaining, as of the world left, or imparted as of the new world, were the doubt. It passed; and then followed a long train similar to that which pre