plum-cake; the ceremonious apparition of a pair
of decanters containing port and sherry and
cork; Sally's sister at the tea-table, clinking
the best crockery and shaking her head
mournfully every time she looked down into the
teapot, as if it were the tomb; the Coat of Arms
again, and Sally as before; lastly, the words of
consolation administered to Sally when it was
considered right that she should "come round
nicely:" which were, that the deceased had had
"as com-for-ta-ble a fu-ne-ral as comfortable
could be!"

Other funerals have I seen with grown-up
eyes, since that day, of which the burden has
been the same childish burden. Making game.
Real affliction, real grief and solemnity, have
been outraged, and the funeral has been
"performed." The waste for which the funeral
customs of many tribes of savages are
conspicuous, has attended these civilised
obsequies; and once, and twice, have I wished in
my soul that if the waste must be, they would let
the undertaker bury the money, and let me
bury the friend.

In France, upon the whole, these ceremonies
are more sensibly regulated, because they are
upon the whole less expensively regulated. I
cannot say that I have ever been, much edified
by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the
front of the house of mourning, or that I
would myself particularly care to be driven to
my grave in a nodding and bobbing car, like
an infirm four-post bedstead, by an inky fellow
creature in a cocked-hat. But it may be that
I am constitutionally insensible to the virtues
of a cocked-hat. In provincial France, the
solemnities are sufficiently hideous, but are
few and cheap. The friends and townsmen of
the departed, in their own dresses and not
masquerading under the auspices of the African
Conjuror, surround the hand-bier, and often
carry it. It is not considered indispensable to
stifle the bearers, or even to elevate the burden
on their shoulders; consequently it is easily
taken up, and easily set down, and is carried
through the streets without the distressing
floundering and shuffling that we see at home.
A dirty priest or two, and a dirtier acolyte or
two, do not lend any especial grace to the
proceedings; and I regard with personal animosity
the bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the
big legged priest (it is always a big legged priest
who blows the bassoon), when his fellows
combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But there
is far less of the Conjuror and the Medicine Man
in the business than under like circumstances
here. The grim coaches that we reserve
expressly for such shows, are non-existent; if the
cemetery be far out of the town, the coaches
that are hired for other purposes of life are
hired for this purpose; and although the honest
vehicles make no pretence of being overcome, I
have never noticed that the people in them
were the worse for it. In Italy, the hooded
Members of Confraternities who attend on
funerals, are dismal and ugly to look upon; but
the services they render are at least voluntarily
rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost
nothing. Why should high civilisation and low
savagery ever come together on the point of
making them a wantonly wasteful and
contemptible set of forms?

Once I lost a friend by death, who had been
troubled in his time by the Medicine Man and
the Conjuror, and upon whose limited resources
there were abundant claims. The Conjuror
assured me that I must positively "follow,"
and both he and the Medicine Man entertained
no doubt that I must go in a black carriage, and
must wear "fittings." I objected to fittings as
having nothing to do with my friendship, and I
objected to the black carriage as being in more
senses than one a job. So, it came into my
mind to try what would happen if I quietly
walked, in my own way, from my own house to
my friend's burial-place, and stood beside his
open grave in my own dress and person,
reverently listening to the best of Services. It
satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well as if I
had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf
both trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost
the orphan children, in their greatest need, ten
guineas.

Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous
absurdities attendant on "A message from the
Lords" in the House of Commons, turn upon
the Medicine Man of the poor Indians? Has
he any "Medicine" in that dried skin pouch of
his, so supremely ludicrous as the two Masters
in Chancery holding up their black petticoats and
butting their ridiculous wigs at Mr. Speaker?
Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell me
—as there are authorities innumerable among
the Indians to tell them—that the nonsense is
indispensable, and that its abrogation would
involve most awful consequences. What would
any rational creature who had never heard of
judicial and forensic "fittings," think of the
Court of Common Pleas on the first day of
Term? Or with what an awakened sense of
humour would LIVINGSTONE'S account of a
similar scene be perused, if the fur and red
cloth and goats' hair and horse hair and powdered
chalk and black patches on the top of the head,
were all at Tala Mungongo instead of
Westminster? That model missionary and good
brave man found at least one tribe of blacks
with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch
that although an amiable and docile people,
they never could see the Missionaries dispose of
their legs in the attitude of kneeling, or hear
them begin a hymn in chorus, without bursting
into roars of irrepressible laughter. It is much
to be hoped that no member of this facetious
tribe may ever find his way to England and get
committed for contempt of Court.

In the Tonga Island already mentioned, there
are a set of personages called Mataboos—or
some such name—who are the Masters of all the
public ceremonies, and who know the exact place
in which every chief must sit down when a
solemn public meeting takes place: a meeting
which bears a family resemblance to our own
Public Dinner, in respect of its being a main