Public Press. If these uninfluenced opinions may be regarded as a criterion of merit, the Proprietors may indeed indulge the gratifying idea that they have fully accomplished the objects which they proposed to themselves in the establishment of this publication.

For so desirable a result they are chiefly indebted to the liberal aid of the Contributors who have favoured them with the influence of their names and talents; and to all and each of whom they here publicly make their best acknowledgments.

When it is considered that, in addition to the six sheets of handsomely-printed letter-press, which of themselves form, at the price charged for this Magazine, one of the cheapest, if not the very cheapest of our periodical miscellanies, the Proprietors have given in this volume a finely engraved Portrait of his late Majesty and some other embellishments, it must be admitted that on this point they have exceeded the terms of their engagement with the Public: and they conclude with the assurance, that it shall be their study to make the successive portions not less worthy of admission into every family in the United Kingdom.

THE FAMILY MAGAZINE.

A CHAPTER FROM "THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF MY FRIEND."

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

I LOVE to muse in the still twilight of evening, while the flickering flame of a cheerful fire throws a fitful brilliance upon the objects around me, and to resign the reins to Fancy. While the body sinks into a half dreamy state of repose, the mind, emancipated from the trammels of time, place, and circumstances, expatiates unfettered as its wildest vagaries amid creations of its own, dissolving them at will, and by its imaginative power recomposing their elements into new forms and new scenes. On these occasions, death, and the disposal of our mortal part after the awful change, have often been the subject of my reveries. I have known persons long past those years when the passions are wont to drown serious reflection-fathers, mothers of families—who would turn with horror from the most cheering views of immortality, because that immortality involves the idea of the previous extinction of mortal life. Now, I have ever entertained the opinion that the more we familiarize ourselves with the idea, the more we meditate on the nature and consequences of this important change, the less we shall dread, and the better we shall be prepared for it. In truth, I know not why we should be more afraid of this transition than of putting off our clothes for the slumber by which we prepare ourselves each night for the labours and the enjoyments of a new day. Much of the horror to which I have adverted must, no doubt, be charged to the manner in which people have been accustomed from childhood to see death described and represented. Poets and painters seem to have tried which could produce the most hideous phantom; and though many of their pictures abound in absurdity, it is but too true that they are calculated to make a deep impression

upon infant minds in general. How may this influence be most effectually counteracted? and how may that, which is now a source of pain, and dread, and horror, to many, be converted into a source of the purest present pleasure and the most delightful anticipations of future felicity? In noting down some of my thoughts on this universally interesting topic, I shall present them to thee, gentle reader, in that desultory and digressive form in which thou mayst suppose them to have arisen.

I need not attempt to prove that all nations, ancient and modern, have evinced a very natural solicitude respecting the disposal of the body after death. Among ourselves, who is there that has not seen the trappings of woe ostentatiously parading our streets, and the costly tombs encumbering our churches and our cemeteries! To me there is something peculiarly repulsive in the air of indifference, nay, even of levity, with which hired mourners, clad in the garb of sorrow, but inwardly insensible as the corpse for which they wear it, escort the funerals of those we loved and commit their remains to the grave. Perhaps I may have been more shocked at this glaring contrast, from having been educated among a sect of Christians, whose mode of conducting funerals is widely different. The congregations of these people form distinct villages, in which none but persons in their connexion are permitted habitually to reside. Forming, as it were, but one family, they are all acquainted with the illness of a member, especially if it is likely to have a fatal termination. It is not the monotonous sound of the passing-bell that proclaims the consummation: no sooner has the spirit quitted the body than the solemn tones of the posauns*, from the belfry in the rear of the chapel, playing certain hymn tunes according to the condition of the deceased, whether male or female, married or single, announce to the little community that Brother or Sister A. or B. is gone home. This is the literal expression used by these people in speaking of death. Excepting in cases of contagious disorder, the corpse, when deposited in the coffin, may be seen by all who wish to take a farewell look at a beloved friend, a dear companion, or one whom for years perhaps they have been accustomed to venerate. The day before the interment, it is removed to the corpse-room, contiguous to the chapel, and thence to the latter, where, covered with a pall of fine linen, embroidered with ribbon of different colours according to the sex, age, and condition of the deceased, and also with an appropriate text of Scripture, it is placed upon a bier standing in the vacant space in the centre separating the forms occupied by the men from those of the women. The congregation is summoned by the posauns to the solemn ceremony. A hymn is sung, and a discourse suitable to the occasion delivered in the chapel. This finished, the bier with the coffin, still covered by the white pall, is borne to its final restingplace by married or single men, according to the class to which the deceased belonged. The procession is opened by the children of both sexes, educated in the schools, two and two. These are followed by the band of wind-instruments, French horns, and posauns, playing

So called after the German name of the instrument, which is generally known in this country by that of trombone.

certain hymn tunes at intervals. The officiating minister precedes the body, which is followed by the relatives; next come the women, and then the men, all walking two and two. In this order they move to the burial-ground, which, in the village where I was educacated, is about a quarter of a mile distant from the chapel. It is approached by a gravel-walk, bordered on either hand by a row of lime-trees; and at the entrance of the cemetery this walk terminates in a path of green turf, by which the ground, laid out in the form of a cross, is divided longitudinally into two equal halves, and other paths running to the right and left part these into large squares. Here, in their virgin graves, repose such members of the community as have " gone home" since its first establishment, about the middle of last century; the males on one side of the main path, the females on the other, where different squares are allotted to children, to the unmarried, to the married, and to the widowed of each sex. Ranged in regular rows with perfect symmetry and neatness, these graves, which form elevations of a few inches, display an absolute equality, the sepulchre of the highest, like that of the humblest, member, being marked only by a small flat stone, recording the name of the individual buried beneath it, and the date of his or her decease. The connoisseur, whose eye is incessantly in search of the picturesque, would no doubt complain of the monotony of such an arrangement; but, if the church-yards of the establishment, with their tombs of such various forms and characters, from the highly sculptured marble monument to the rudely carved wooden rail and the osiered mound, possess an advantage in this respect, to me at least that uniformity, that unpretending equality where all are equal, and where each occupies the spot which the order of time points out for him, bespeak a modesty, a decency, and a propriety, that are singularly impressive.

Around one of the quadrangles just described, then, in which a receptacle has been prepared in turn for the person whom we have thus far escorted, the congregation range themselves. The burial

liturgy is read, and the coffin is lowered into the grave during the singing of a verse for the occasion, accompanied by the wind-instruments. The spot to which I have conducted the reader is seated on the gentle slope of a considerable hill. Through the middle of the valley, at its foot, runs a small stream, and beyond it the ground again swells into another hill, covered in great part with wood. a serene day, the echoes of the horns, returned by these woods, like the voices of responding spirits announcing to the survivors the reception into eternity of a kindred essence, on whose mortal part the earth has closed for ever, produce an emotion of rapture not unmingled with awe*. When it is recollected that the actors in this

On

It was formerly customary here, as at other settlements of the community, to hold, in this burial-ground, as soon as it was light on Easter morning, a general commemoration of such of its members as had" gone home," during the preceding year, and also of the great event celebrated by all Christendom on that day. This, as it has been described to me, must have been a particularly solemn and impressive ceremony, but it was found necessary to discontinue it, owing to the concourse of people who, in confident expectation of seeing the dead recalled to life, flocked thither from the whole surrounding country in such numbers as to trample down the hedges, and do other mischief. Note, by my Friend.

scene are nearly as well known to each other as if they were all members of one family, it will be easy to conceive how different must be the character of such a ceremony from that of funerals in general: yet we here see none of the hired paraphernalia of sorrow; and indeed so little do the members of this community affect the outward appearance of it, that the assumption of what is called mourning is, or at least was in my time, a very unusual thing among them.

Such were the sights and sounds with which I was familiar from an early age till I had nearly arrived at manhood. My removal to the metropolis suddenly transplanted me into a new world. It was some years before I there witnessed the ceremony of a funeral; and it so happened that the first person whose remains I saw consigned to the grave was an old school-fellow, who, at the time of his death, which had unexpectedly terminated a short illness, was clerk to a tradesman in the city. He had left no relations, and the arrears of his salary were expended in raising the funeral-arrangements above the ordinary standard. With a companion who had also known the deceased, I followed at a distance to the church, situated in the very heart of our commercial capital. The sacred edifice and the pall which covered the coffin were decorated with flowers; but the hurried manner of the officiating clergyman, who seemed impatient to acquit himself of an irksome task, the business-like indifference of the director of the ceremony and his sable assistants, the closeness of the few square yards of ground constituting the church-yard, to which the sun can never penetrate, and the strong contrast of the whole scene with what I had been used to witness, threw such a chill and such a horror over my spirits while I stood upon the mound raised in making the grave, as left in my mind a permanent feeling of disgust.

All that I have since heard and seen of these depositories of mortality has tended only to strengthen that feeling, in which every reader of a public newspaper must more or less have partaken. I need not insist on the frequent outrages committed there on religion, on common decency, and on the best affections of our nature: I need not picture the unhallowed practices of the human hyenas who prowl about them at night to violate the repose of the sepulchre, and to prey upon the relics of those who have been near and dear to us; or the spectacle presented when, as is frequently the case, the inmate of the grave is prematurely ejected to make room for a new tenant. These are scenes which the boasted philosophy of the day may contemplate with indifference, but from which every bosom possessing the least sensibility must recoil with heart-sickness and loathing.

Unfortunately, these scenes are not confined to our great and populous cities, but contaminate the cemeteries of the most sequestered villages. Still the prejudice in favour of being laid in consecrated ground is so strong that numbers, even of well-educated persons, could not die in peace if they supposed that their remains should have any other resting-place. The extermination of this prejudice would, in my opinion, be attended with many moral benefits; I shall therefore endeavour to develop my private sentiments on this point at the risk of being denounced by persons bigoted to ancient usage as profane or even impious.