the sympathies and imagination of a stranger. On the inhabitants, as might
be apprehended, such pageants have long since lost all their influence;
and I have seen a line extending down a whole street, without deranging a
single lounger from his seat, or interrupting for an instant the pleasures
of ice-eating and punch-drinking, which generally takes place in the open
air. Whether this passion for bringing into coarse contact, as is often
the case, both life and death, the gloomy and the gay, be constitutional
or traditional, I know not; but a traveller can scarcely fail of being
struck with the prevalence of the feeling and practice amongst southern
nations at all periods of their history, and finding in the modern
inhabitants of those favoured regions, frequent resemblances to that
strange spirit of melancholy voluptuousness, which travelled onward from
Egypt to Greece, and from Greece, together with the other refinements of
her philosophy, into the greater part of Italy. On reaching the church,
unless the wealth and situation of the departed can permit the consolation
or the vanity of a high mass, the body is immediately committed to the
tomb. Such at least is the practice at Rome; and there are few who have
not witnessed with disgust the indecent haste of the few attendants by
whom this portion of the last rites is usually despatched. In the country,
and in smaller towns, the corpse is usually exposed for at least a day: I
know few exceptions, from Trent to Naples. It is generally an affecting
ceremony. One of the most touching instances of the kind I can remember,
was the exposure of a young girl, who had just died in the flush of beauty
in a small village in Tuscany. I was passing through at the time, and
stepped by chance into the church. The corpse was lying on a low bier
before the altar; a small lamp burnt above. Her two younger sisters were
kneeling at her side, and from time to time cast flowers upon her head.
Scarcely a peasant entered but immediately came up and touched the bier,
and, after kneeling for a few moments, rose and murmured a prayer or two
for the spiritual rest of the departed. All this was done very naturally,