To the mourner we would say--Weep on; nature requires your tears. They are sent in mercy by Him who wept at the grave of his friend Lazarus. The man of sorrows himself taught us to weep. We once heard a very beautiful volatile young lady exclaim, with something very like glee in her look and tone, after reading a letter she had received by the post, with its ominous black bordering and seal--"Grandmamma is dead! We shall have to go into deep mourning. I am so glad, for black is so becoming to me!" An old aunt, who was present, expressed her surprise at this indecorous avowal; when the young lady replied, with great _naivete_--"I never saw grandmamma in my life. I cannot be expected to feel any grief for her death." "Perhaps not," said the aunt. "But why, then, make a show of that which you do not feel?" "Oh, it's the custom of the world. You know we must. It would be considered _shocking_ not to go into very _deep_ mourning for such a near relation." The young lady inherited a very nice legacy, too, from her grandmamma; and, had she spoken the truth, she would have said, "I cannot weep for joy." Her mourning, in consequence, was of the deepest and most expensive kind; and she really did look charming in her "love of a black crape bonnet!" as she skipped before the glass, admiring herself and it, when it came home fresh from the milliner's. In contrast to the pretty young heiress, we knew a sweet orphan girl whose grief for the death of her mother, to whom she was devotedly attached, lay deeper than this hollow tinsel show; and yet the painful thought that she was too poor to pay this mark of respect to the memory of her beloved parent, in a manner suited to her birth and station, added greatly to the poignancy of her sorrow. A family who had long been burthened with a cross old aunt, who was a martyr to rheumatic gout, and whose violent temper kept the whole house in awe, and whom they dared not offend for fear of her leaving her wealth to strangers, were in the habit of devoutly wishing the old lady a happy release from her sufferings. When this long anticipated event at length took place, the very servants were put into the deepest mourning. What a solemn farce--we should say, lie--was this!