45 



— a mere ceremony of parade, disguised under a pious veil : grief 

 is no longer obliged to conceal under the shadow of the domestic 

 root a ioiig-cherished remembrance, equally honorable to the 

 memory of the virtuous nian, who is no more, and to the hearts of 

 tiiose who survive him. Forgetfulness, ingratitude, and irreve- 

 rence towards the dead, denote frigid, seltish, and inconstant 

 friends, who are governed sol- ly by personal interests. The hon- 

 ors of which the departed are the object, are not limited to the 

 gloomy moments of the silent funeral ; they are perpetuated by 

 the erection of tombs, by the epitaphs engraved upon them, by 

 the cares of which they become the objects, and by those pious 

 duties, of which they are the never-failing termination. 



The peculiar manners of each class of society, the inclinations, 

 the propensities, and the degree of sensibility of each person, is 

 revealed in spite of himself, by his countenance, his looks, and 

 his conversation, at the time he witnesses the obsequies ; and the 

 measure of the real worth of every individual, is easily apprecia- 

 ted by the sentiments which are excited in those who accompany 

 him, when his remains are transported to the sepulchre. Nothing 

 is more varied than the melancholy scenes which this place con- 

 stantly presents ; ail the virtues of the heart are displayed, and 

 all the vices are perceived. The rude multitude disclose their 

 feelings without restraint; they bitterly weep for those whose loss 

 they regret, and remain cold and unmoved near the tomb of such 

 as died without virtue and without vice, or were but little known 

 to them ; they are severe in their remarks upon those who did not 

 know how to estimate life ; their opinions, always strongly pro- 

 nounced, truly express the convictions of their minds. 



The observer of manners and customs is not astonished at be- 

 holding the spendthrift, the gamester, the debauchee, and the 

 idler, interred in the common pit of the poor : during their whole 

 lives they had been rushing towards that abyss ; but he is in- 

 structed in human calamities when he witnesses the obsequies of 

 the honest man, who had struggled in vain, during a long life, 

 against misfortune ; his heart is deeply affected when he sees the 

 orphan, left without support, without resources, and without 

 friends, shedding tears on the grave of a kind father ; in hearing 

 the lamentations of a mother, calling in vain upon her departed 

 child ; in beholding the desolation of the widow, and is a spectator 

 of that agony of grief, which friends evince, and in which the 

 poor participate, at the decease of a truly charitable man : but 

 how deep is his commiseration, on perceiving the most miserable 

 of men conducted to his grave, by only a few funeral assistants ; 

 he had neither relatives nor friends, — no one pities his sad desti- 

 ny, — isolated in the world, his dreary days were passed without 

 consolation, without the kind proffer of any kind offices, — ever 

 suffering from some new cause of sorrow, some new calamity, 

 some new distress, — always unhappy. How many shades of sen- 



