Vernon is perhaps the only town in France wherein the ancient custom of which we are about to speak still exists. When a death occurs, an individual, robed in a mortuary tunic, adorned with cross-bones and tear-drops, goes through the streets with a small bell in either hand, the sound of which is sharp and penetrating; at every place where the streets cross each other, he rings his bells three times, crying out in a doleful voice: "Such-a-one, belonging to the Confraternity of St. Roch, or the Confraternity of St. Sebastian, &c., &c., is recommended to your prayers. He is dead. The funeral will take place at such-an- hour." Then he rings again three times. The first Sunday of each month arrives. Then, at the dawn of day the same individual goes again through the town, ringing continuously, knocking thrice at the door of each member of the confraternity, and stopping at the corners of the streets, he sings: "Good people," or "good souls, who sleep, awake! awake! pray for the dead! &c."--_Voix de la Verité_, July 22, 1846. DEVOTION TO THE HOLY SOULS AMONGST THE EARLY ENGLISH. ANNA T. SADLIER. An English writer, the gifted author of the Knights of St. John, makes the following assertion as regards the people of her own nationality: "Our Catholic ancestors," she says, "are said to have been distinguished above all other nations for their devotion towards the dead; and it harmonizes with one feature in our national character, namely, that gravity and attraction to things of solemn and pathetic interest which, uncontrolled by the influence of faith, degenerates even into melancholy." In view of this assertion, it will be interesting to spend a few moments in gathering up the links of this most ancient and most touching devotion, amongst a people who have collectively, as it were, fallen away from grace. It is therefore our purpose to look backwards into that solemn and beautiful past of which heretical England can boast, and behold her, as Carlyle beheld her in his "Past and Present," offering to the world the sublime spectacle of a people devout and faithful, undisturbed by doubt, tranquilized by the harmonious influence of religion, and unharassed by the spirit of so called philosophic inquiry, which, misdirected, is the true bane of English society at the present day.