I have, in the work formerly alluded to, endeavoured to paint an ancient funeral procession, from the pages of holy writ, and to shew how great was the respect paid to the dead in the patriarchal ages. Through what a laud of poetry and peril was the dead body of Joseph brought out of Egypt! We marvel that no painter has been bold enough to grapple with so sublime a subject. Amid the plagues that struck consternation into the hearts of the old Egyptians, there stood the coffin ready to be borne away: in the deep darkness which overshadowed the land--it stood black and silent amid the deep gloom. When the Israelites departed they bore it away: the pillar of fire flashed redly upon it by night, and by day it was slowly carried behind the pillar of cloud: through the Red Sea it was borne; below that high and terrible wall of water did the body of that dead man pass; then the sleeping billows rolled back, and there the haughty Egyptians found a grave. Through storm and battle, and the perils of the wilderness, and the thunder which shook Mount Sinai, was the body of Joseph carried; and when Moses held up his wearied arm and conquered Amalek, it was still there. On the waves of war it was at last washed to the Promised Land; it followed the Ark of God when Jordan was divided, and was at length buried in the field of Shechem, in the ground which Jacob had long before purchased of the sons of Hamor. In the whole annals of time, there is no funeral procession that in sublimity and grandeur approaches his, who when young was sold as a slave to the Egyptians. That dead-march through the God-dried ocean, and over the desert, led by Moses--the man who had spoken to his Maker, and who was a mourner at that solemn funeral--causes the eye to quiver beneath its gloomy and awful grandeur: we see the dead and the living pass away amid the roar of the ocean, the thunder of the Mount, and the clashing of battle upon battle; and while we read, we feel as if we stood trembling in the presence of God. I will not break the chain of the reader's thoughts while pondering over this great and grand funeral procession, by pointing to the desecration of the dead in the present day, further than stating that the revolting and impious evil can only be remedied by suburban cemeteries; for around such places there reigns a silence in keeping with the solemnity of death: there no jarring sounds fall upon the ear, for the lulling murmur made by the leaves is in keeping with the repose of the dead. Flowers planted upon a grave seem like sacred objects; in our minds they somehow appear to belong to the dead, as if hallowed by the soil in which they have grown. There are numberless passages in our old poets abounding with descriptions of flowers which were dedicated to the dead; and we may, in some future work, return to the subject, and string together a garland of funeral emblems; for