grey slouched hat is thrown back, much in the manner in which it appears
on the statues of Mercury, on their shoulders; their feet are often in
zoccoli, or sandals of wood, and sometimes, though rarely, bare. The
colour of their dress varies according to the rule of their society; at
Rome, I have noticed white, blue, and grey: at Florence they prefer black.
The corpse is dressed up with great care, and often with a degree of luxury
which would become a wedding; the best linen, the richest ornaments, are
lavished; garlands are placed on the head; the hands crossed, with a
crucifix between them, on the bosom, and the face and feet left quite bare.
Sometimes, through a capricious fit of piety, all this is studiously
dispensed with, and the body appears clad in the habit of some religious
order, to which the deceased was especially addicted during life. In this
manner the procession begins to move after sunset, preceded by a tall
silver cross, beadles, &c.; friars, priests, &c. chanting the De Profundis
through the principal streets to the church where it is intended it should
be interred.

The effect, with some abatements for boys following to pick up the
drippings of the torches, and the perfect indifference of the assistants,
for neither friends nor relatives attend, is certainly very solemn. The
deep hoarse recitative of the psalm, the strange phantom-like appearance
of the fraternities, the flash and glare of the torches which they carry,
on the face of the dead; the dead body itself, in all the appalling
nakedness of mortality, but still mocked with the tawdry images of this
world, in the flowers and tinsel and gilding which surround it; the quick
swinging motion with which it is hurried along, and with which it comes
trenching, when one least expects it, on all the gaieties and busy
interests of existence (for at this hour the Corso and the Caffés are most
crowded)--all this, without any reference to the intrinsic solemnity of
such a scene, is calculated, as mere stage effect, powerfully to stir up