The mutes that attended the long line of mourning coaches stood motionless, leaning on their long staffs wreathed with white, like so many figures that the frost-king had stiffened into stone. The hearse, with its snowy plumes, drawn by six milk-white horses, might have served for the regal car of his northern majesty, so ghost-like and chilly were its sepulchral trappings. At length the coffin, covered with black velvet, and a pall lined with white silk and fringed with silver, was borne from the house and deposited in the gloomy depths of the stately hearse. The _hired_ mourners, in their sable dresses and long white hatbands and scarfs, rode slowly forward mounted on white horses, to attend this bride of death to her last resting place. The first three carriages that followed contained the family physician and surgeon, a clergyman, and the male servants of the house, in deep sables. The family carriage too was there, but _empty_, and of a procession in which 145 private carriages made a conspicuous show, all but those enumerated above were _empty_. Strangers drove strange horses to that vast funeral, and _hired servants_ were the only members of the family that conducted the last scion of that family to the grave. Truly, it was the most dismal spectacle we ever witnessed, and we turned from it sick at heart, and with eyes moist with tears not shed for the dead, for she had escaped from this vexatious vanity, but from the heartless mockery of all this fictitious woe. The expense of such a funeral probably involved many hundred pounds, which had been better bestowed on charitable purposes. Another evil arising out of this absurd custom, is the high price attached to black clothing, on account of the necessity that compels people to wear it for so long a period after the death of a near relation, making it a matter of still greater difficulty for the poorer class to comply with the usages of society. "But who cares about the poor, whether they go into mourning for their friends or no? it is a matter of no consequence." Ah, there it is. And this is not the least forcible argument we have to advance against this useless custom. If it becomes a moral duty for the rich to put on black for the death of a friend, it must be morally necessary for the poor to do the same. We see no difference in the degrees of moral feeling; the soul of man is of no rank, but of equal value in our eyes, whether belonging to rich or poor. But this usage is so general, and the neglect of it considered such a disgrace, that it leaves a very wide door open for the entrance of false pride.