The funeral of the Vicar was far more solemn than any other which I witnessed in the country. In most instances the funeral ceremony has few of those gloomy accessories which our customs prescribe as no more than decorous. Youth, innocence, and beauty, like ornaments on the brow of age, or on the withered limbs of deformity, serve only to heighten the terrors of our grim conception of death, the gloomy and remorseless tyrant who gloats, fiend-like, over the victims of his skeleton arm. Theirs is a happier conception. Death mercifully relieves the infant from the sorrows and the dangers of life; and withers the rose on the cheeks of youth, that it may retain its bloom and fragrance in the more genial atmosphere of Heaven. The tear of grief falls only for those whose long contact with the world has effaced the stamp of divinity, whose matured passions have cankered the heart, and whose misdirected ambitions have diverted the aspirations of the soul and the energies of the mind from heaven to earth, from the grandeurs of Eternity to the frivolities of Time. The youngest daughter of the Licenciado D. died and was buried in the latter part of October. She was young, scarce sixteen, and the idolized child of her parents. Her funeral might have been her bridal, in its total freedom from outward manifestations of grief. The procession formed before my window. First were musicians playing a cheerful strain, and next the priests chaunting a song of triumph. After them, on the shoulders of young men, was borne a litter, covered with white satin and loaded with orange branches, amidst which, dressed in white as for a festival, her head wreathed with pure white flowers, and holding in her hands a silver cross, was the marble form of the dead girl. The bereaved parents, the sisters and relations of the deceased followed; their eyes were tearless, and though the traces of sorrow were visible on their faces, yet over all there was an expression of hope, and of faith in the teachings of Him who has declared “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The funerals of infants are much the same. The body is invariably dressed in white, and covered with flowers. Men firing rockets, and musicians playing lively airs, precede the corpse, and the parents and relatives follow. The rationale of this apparent want of feeling is to be found in the Romish doctrine of baptismal regeneration, according to which the departed spirit being in heaven, there is more cause for happiness than grief.