As my friend thought it yet rather early for a visit, we had remained chattering in this way for more than an hour, sometimes seated on a tombstone, or a fallen column; sometimes peering amongst the carved fragments that were scattered about the ground, and sometimes looking over the hedge into the little garden, the wicket of which was immediately behind the tower. The weather being warm, most of the windows of the vicarage were open and the blinds were all down; we had not yet seen a soul stirring, and were just wondering whether we might venture to present ourselves at the door, when a strain of distant music struck upon our ears. ‘Hark!’ I said, ‘how exquisite! It was the only thing wanting to complete the charm.’ ‘It’s a military band, I think,’ said Mrs. Markham, ‘you know we passed some barracks before we reached the Inn.’ Nearer and nearer drew the sound, solemn and slow; the band was evidently approaching by the green lane that skirted the fields we had come by. ‘Hush,’ said I, laying my hand on my friend’s arm, with a strange sinking of the heart; ‘they are playing the Dead March in Saul! Don’t you hear the muffled drums? It’s a funeral, but where’s the grave?’ ‘There!’ said she, pointing to a spot close under the hedge where some earth had been thrown up; but the aperture was covered with a plank, probably to prevent accidents. There are few ceremonies in life at once so touching, so impressive, so sad, and yet so beautiful, as a soldier’s funeral! Ordinary funerals with their unwieldy hearses and feathers, and the absurd looking mutes, and the ‘inky cloaks’ and weepers, of hired mourners, always seem to me like a mockery of the dead; the appointments border so closely on the grotesque; they are so little in keeping with the true, the only view of death that can render life endurable! There is such a tone of exaggerated——forced, heavy, over-acted gravity about the whole thing, that one had need to have a deep personal interest involved in the scene, to be able to shut one’s eyes to the burlesque side of it. But a military funeral, how different! There you see death in life and life in death! There is nothing over-strained, nothing overdone. At once simple and solemn, decent and decorous, consoling, yet sad. The chief mourners, at best, are generally true mourners, for they have lost a brother with whom ‘they sat but yesterday at meat;’ and whilst they are comparing memories, recalling how merry they had many a day been together, and the solemn tones of that sublime music float upon the air, we can imagine the freed and satisfied soul wafted on those harmonious breathings to its Heavenly home; and our hearts are melted, our imaginations exalted, our faith invigorated, and we come away the better for what we have seen.