The stranger's funeral is peculiarly sad everywhere, but in Paris its
melancholy is enhanced by the interference of foreign usages. Over the
dead as well as the living the municipal authorities claim instant
power, and the bereaved must submit to their time and arrangements in
depositing the mortal remains of the loved in the grave. The black
scarfs and chapeaux of the undertakers and their prescriptive orders
were strangely dissonant to the group of Americans collected at the
obsequies of a young countryman, and seemed incongruous when associated
with the simple Protestant ceremonial performed in another tongue. Under
the direction of those sable officials we entered the mourning coaches
and followed the plumed hearse. It is an impressive custom--one of the
humanities of the Catholic--to lift the hat at the sight of such a
procession; such an act, performed like this by prince and beggar in the
crowded street, so gay, busy, self-absorbed, bears affecting witness to
the common vicissitudes and instincts of mankind. The dead leaves
strewed the avenue of Pere la Chaise, and the bare trees creaked in the
gale as we threaded sarcophagi, tablets, and railed cenotaphs; in the
distance, smoke-canopied, stretched the vast city; around were countless
effigies of the dead of every rank, from the plain slab of the
undistinguished citizen to the wreathed obelisk of the hero, from the
ancient monument of Abelard and Heloise to the broken turf on the new
grave of poverty only designated by a wooden cross; gray clouds flitted
along the zenith, and a pale streak of light defined the wide horizon;
Paris with its frivolity, temples, business, pleasures, trophies and
teeming life, sent up a confused and low murmur in the distance; only
the wind was audible among the tombs. Never had the beautiful Church of
England services appeared to me so grand and pathetic as when here read
over the coffin of one who had died in exile, and with only a few of his
countrymen, most of them unacquainted even with his features, to attend