of the living, "and he died," is an unwise condition.

The little glass door opposite the face in the coffin lid also hurts English feeling. It seems a compromise between the Popish fashion of the exposure of the body dressed as in life, and the Protestant custom of closing up reverently all that is left, to wait the sound of the last trumpet. Were it not usual to inter very speedily, this exposure of the countenance, which seems to me afflicting, would probably not be practised. With us it could not do at all.

In the middle ranks in New York it is usual for any neighbours that choose, to enter the house of mourning and look upon the corpse. A Scotch lady whose feelings revolted against such an exhibition, said she was forced to send the very disobliging message to the many who rung her bell, that she could not admit strangers, and allowed of no such custom. She observed very wisely, that she feared such familiarity with the aspect of death had rather a hardening than a softening tendency, and that she had been shocked to hear young girls and boys remarking on the "natural," or "life-like," or "deathlike" appearances before them, as coolly as they would criticise a picture or a doll.

In England, Christian parents have experience of the solemnising effect on their offspring, when first conducted to look upon the frame that no longer breathes and looks lovingly on them. It is

wrong to make that a light subject which exists ever as a token of divine displeasure against human disobedience or that a common event which can befall each of us but once. And that once!—which

kingdom may it open to us?

Invitations to funerals are frequently attached to the obituary notice in the newspaper-and the attendance depends much on the esteem in which the departed was held. The connected and the unconnected go alike, and you may see ladies in gay vestments with bright roses in their hats, mingling sincere tears with those dressed in the deepest mourning. If it is the funeral of a well-known Christian character, and a member of a church, the body is laid in front of the pulpit, and the friends gather round while an act of worship is performed, and a short oration is delivered, which is not simply laudatory, or pronouncing judgment on the dead, but rather warning to the living. The service is generally simple and touching, and calculated to be useful. The Episcopal form nearly resembles that of England.

The Odd Fellows' funerals are more like triumphal processions, with bands of music, flags, ribbons, and all the gaudy insignia of official people in the society, than like returning the ashes of a departed brother to the parent dust. It is said they are rendered very injurious to the morals of the community by being generally performed on the Lord's day, and during the hours of worship, and that many

step in as they pass, to each place where intoxicating drinks are sold, until they return reeling from the cemetery.

As to the Irish funerals, the first I observed consisted of twenty-eight carriages, crammed with people of all ages, with laughing faces and loud jollity, dressed in red and green ribbons, rendered more conspicuous by being blown about through the open windows by the wind. Not having observed the little modest hearse which preceded all this fun and frolic, the inquiry was not unnatural, if these people were going to a fair,—and the surprise was great to learn that they were following a funeral to the Popish burial-ground at Williamsburgh.

The hearse, in America, is a modest, low conveyance, somewhat lower and narrower than our carriages for pianofortes, free from the pomp of plumes, which look so like an attempt to put an air of grandeur on the most subduing event in life. The absence of escutcheons and blazonry on the house of the departed becomes the simplicity of a republic. A more touching and simple symbol we first observed in Baltimore, and saw it afterwards in Philadelphia and elsewhere. Where death has entered, a strip of black crape is attached to the handle of the front door, the length of which indicates the age of the departed, so that no unwarned visitors can intrude on private sorrow. It is also customary in some places to fix the outside shutters with crape in a position more than half closed, so

that the inmates live in that obscured light for many weeks, or months, if it be the head of the family who is dead, or if the departed is deeply mourned.

The Americans, partaking as they do of the mixture of many nations, have caught up tastes and habits from various quarters. The German neat and tasteful arrangement of small things, shews itself in the very hanging of the empty fruit-baskets in festoons at a gardener's stall, and the arranging of small flower-pots with an eye to the undulating line of beauty. And thus, in putting the Hall of Independence, at Philadelphia, in mourning for the late President, they had drawn a long piece of crape through the beak of the eagle which floats over the figure of Washington, in such a manner, that its folds fell gracefully down, shading the statue on either side. The effect was beautiful, and suggestive of many thoughts. Men may be cut off, but institutions will remain. -a President may expire, but the Republic will survive.

Ah! what a noble country! and yet how like this blighted world! It has a dark shade mingling among its stars and stripes-one under which it sighs and groans. When will vigour, true independence and virtue, be given to it to remove that dark shade, and allow all who admire its achievements and honour its ingenious industry, to admire without a sigh, and to honour without a drawback?

That dark shade would not withdraw from the

mind in the Hall of Independence, nor even at Washington, when the heart swelled in contemplation of the magnificent Capitol and all the affairs transacted within it. It appeared in the countenance and manner of the southerner, so different from those of the north. It hung about the figure of the shrinking free coloured man, who seems to quail under the cold eye of the white. It trembled around the lowly quiet celerity of the slave who watched your look as if it were his duty to conjecture your wants, not from love, but from fear. It even clouded the services of the handy little boy who ran from wing to wing of the busy hotel, carrying all sorts of small wares and messages. He might be happy in his ignorance, poor boy! he was not harshly treated, and his mother was in the house. But he was not his mother's child-he was his master's. She was not her own, nor her husband's-she also was her master's. And who was he?-a humane man enough, born, under Providence, with a white skin, otherwise he too might have become the chattel of another.

Forgive the generous wish that no tarnish should be on your country's standard. I know that millions of you hate the system which I mourn-I know that it is not foreign remark or interference which will rid you of it. You are a free people. Your own intelligence and moral energy must reclaim you-no external powers can turn you back if you go astray. You have expelled slavery from one half