Lord Acton, in one of his most impressive passages, speaks of England as living under "institutions which incorporate tradition and prolong the reign of the dead." But the very notion of "prolonging the reign of the dead" is an anachronism in an age which forgets its friends the moment it has buried them. "Out of sight, out of mind" is an adage which nowadays verifies itself with startling rapidity. Mourning is as much out of date as Suttee; and, as to the Widow's Cap, the admirable Signora Vesey Neroni in "Barchester Towers" was only a little in advance of her age when she exclaimed, "The death of twenty husbands should not make me undergo such a penance. It is as much a relic of paganism as the sacrifice of a Hindoo woman at the burning of her husband's body. If not so bloody, it is quite as barbarous and quite as useless." In days gone by, a death in a family extinguished all festivity. Engagements were cancelled, social plans were laid aside, and the mourners went into retreat for a twelvemonth. Men wore black trousers; women swathed themselves in black crape. "Mourning Jewellery"--hideous combinations of jet and bogwood--twinkled and jingled round the necks of the bereaved, and widows wrote on letter-paper which was virtually black, with a small white space in the middle of the sheet. Harry Foker, we know, honoured his father's memory by having his brougham painted black; and I have known a lady who, when she lost her husband, had her boudoir lined with black velvet, after the fashion of Lord Glenallan in "The Antiquary." But nowadays people shrink (with amiable considerateness) from thus inflicting their griefs on their friends; and if (as we must in charity assume) they feel emotion, they studiously conceal it in their own bosoms. The ball follows the funeral with a celerity and a frank joyousness which suggest a Wake; and the keen pursuers of pleasure protest, with quite a religious air, that for their own part they would think it absolutely wicked to sorrow as those without hope. Weedless widows, becomingly "gowned," as Ladies' Papers say, in pale grey or black and white, sacrifice to propriety by forswearing the Opera or the Racecourse for twelve months or so, but find a little fresh air on the River or at Hurlingham absolutely necessary for health; and, if they dine out quietly or even give a little dance at home, are careful to protest that they have lost all pleasure in life, but must struggle to keep up for the sake of the dear children. Surely, as Master Shallow says, "good phrases are, and ever were, very commendable." The old-fashioned manifestations of mourning were no doubt overdone, but the modern disregard of the dead seems to me both heartless and indecent.