Triumphantly distress'd! what joy, what dread! What can preserve my life? or what destroy? 'Tis past conjecture; all things rise in proof, nature Of subtler essence than the trodden clod; For human weal, Heaven husbands all events; Young. MOURNING. A FRENCH Writer gives a neat summary of the different observances among mankind relative to mourning and funeral ceremonies. All the world, says he, is acquainted with the magnificence of the Roman obsequies and funeral games. The Greeks also burnt the corpses of distinguished individuals, with funeral feasts, and the lamentations of hired weepers, though they generally displayed a less sumptuous grief, and a better regulated piety. The Persians buried the bodies of the dead, and the Scythians ate them; the Indians enveloped them, for preservation's sake, in a sort of lacker; and the Egyptians embalmed and dried them, exhibited them on festival days, placed them at the table among their guests, guarded them as their most precious possessions, and lent and borrowed money upon these strange pledges. In our time, the custom of dancing at funerals is only practised in India and other savage nations; but funeral entertainments still prevail in many European countries. Among others, the ceremony of interment is solemn and silent, which nevertheless does not interfere with the wish that all may be forgotten as speedily as possible. We observe more ostentatious rites for persons of consequence; their carriages follow them to the grave, and sometimes their horse is paraded, which, having been made to fast, seems to partake of the affliction of the occasion. The Orientals, from whom we borrowed this custom, went further; -they made the horses in funeral processions weep, by blowing a particular powder up their nostrils! In Italy, the mourning was formerly white for women, and brown for men; in China it is white; in Turkey, Syria, and America, it is blue; in Egypt, yellow in Ethiopia, grey. Each of these colours had originally its mystical signification. White is the emblem of purity; celestial blue indicates the space where the soul ranges after death; yellow, or the tinge of dead leaves, exhibits death as the end of all human hope, and men falling like the leaf of Autumn; grey presents the colour of the earth, our common mother; and black, the funeral costume now adopted throughout Europe, is an allusion to the eternal night. In England, the king never wears black; he is clothed in red, as mourning. Till the reign of Charles VIII., white was the funeral garb in France. The emperor Leopold, who died in 1575, used to suffer his beard to grow in disorder the whole period of mourning. In this he imitated the Jews. The dowager enpresses never left off weeds, and their apartments were hung with black till their death. The chancellor of France is the only person in the kingdom who never wears mourning. The brothers, nephews, and cousins of Popes never wear it. The happiness of having a Pope in the family, is too great to allow them to be afflicted even by his death. But the most remarkable of all the usages is, perhaps, that of the people of those ancient nations who dressed themselves as women when they lost their relatives, in order, it is said, that the ridicule attached to their vestments might make them ashamed of their grief. Anonymous. FRIENDS. FRIEND after friend departs; Who hath not lost a friend? There is no union here of hearts That finds not here an end: Were this frail world our only rest, Living or dying, none were blest. Beyond the flight of time, Beyond this vale of death, There surely is some blessèd clime, Where life is not a breath; Nor life's affections transient fire, Whose sparks fly upwards to expire. There is a world above, Where parting is unknown, A whole eternity of love, Form'd for the good alone, |