down, and are most rigidly observed, even by distant relations, who refrain from all kinds of amusements:-- “None bear about the mockery of woe To public dances or to private show.” [Sidenote: ALL SOULS’ DAY.] We well remember the death of a kind and venerable Marquesa at Seville just before the carnival, whose chief grief at dying, was the thought of the number of young ladies who would thus be deprived of their balls and masquerades; many, anxious and obliging, were the inquiries sent after her health, and more even were the daily prayers offered up to the Virgin, for the prolongation of her precious existence, could it be only for a few weeks. November drear, brings in other solemnities connected with the dead, and in harmony with the fall of the sear and yellow leaves, to which Homer compares the races of mortal men. The night before the first of November--our All Hallow-e’en--is kept in Spain as a vigil or wake; it is the fated hour of love divinations and mysteries; then anxious maidens used to sit at their balconies to see the image of their destined husbands pass or not pass by. November the first is dedicated to the sainted dead, and November the second to all souls: it is termed in Spanish _el dia de los difuntos_, the day of the dead, and is most scrupulously observed by all who have lost during the past year some friend, some relation--how few have not! The dawn is ushered in by mournful bells, which recall the memory of those who cannot come back at the summons; the cemeteries are then visited; at Seville, long processions of sable-clad females, bearing chased lamps on staves, walk slowly round and round, chaunting melancholy dirges, returning when it gets dusk in a long line of glittering lights. The graves during the day are visited by those who take a sad interest in their occupants, and lamps and flower garlands are suspended as memorials of affection, and holy water is sprinkled, every drop of which puts out some of the fires of purgatory. These picturesque proceedings at once resemble the _Eed es Segheer_ of modern Cairo, the _feralia_ of the Romans, the Νεμεσια of the Greeks: here are the flower offerings of Electra, the _funes assensi_, the funeral torches of pagan mourners, which have vainly been prohibited to Christian Spaniards by their early Council of Illiberis. In Navarre, and in the north-west of Spain, bread and wheat offerings called _robos_ are made, which are the doles or gifts offered for the souls’ rest of the deceased by the pious of ancient Rome. [Sidenote: PURGATORY.]