weepers have well-nigh disappeared. The grotesquely ghastly hearse is
almost a thing of the past, and the coffin goes forth heaped over with
flowers instead of shrouded in the heavy black velvet pall. Men and
women, though still wearing black, do not roll themselves up in
shapeless garments like sable winding-sheets, as if trying to see how
miserable they could make themselves by the imposition of artificial
discomforts. Welcome common-sense has driven custom from its throne,
and has refused any longer to add these gratuitous annoyances to
natural human grief.

In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding
Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted
as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening
figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking
an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round
this rightly-named King of Terrors. Milton, who has done so much with
his stately rhythm to mould the popular conceptions of modern
Christianity, has used all the sinewy strength of his magnificent
diction to surround with horror the figure of Death.

The other shape,
If shape it might be called, that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast,