The power of the dead man, by a _Will_, to cut off a wife or a son with a _shilling_ (as the Barbarians express it), is monstrous. Then the unjust law, by which the next of kin takes all the Lands of a deceased, works endless misery. Think of younger brothers and younger sisters being forced to depend upon the _cold charity_ of the oldest, who, by mere accident of birth, takes every thing! And not only this, but some distant _male_ relative may cut off the very means of subsistence from females very near, and throw them helpless, and too poor to buy husbands, upon the world! A disgrace and shame too shocking for belief. Then, too, the wife's relatives may have paid to her husband the very money which, by the Will, is coolly handed to a stranger! Such anomalies are unknown to the customs of any well-ordered and civilised people. The new Widow usually remains shut up in her house, inaccessible to all but her children, her servants, her Bonze, and her Lawyer, for twelve moons exactly. During this time she devotes herself to the prayers and invocations of the _rites_; and will not so much as look at a man, unless the exceptions named. She is wholly draped in black; her children, her servants, even her horses and dogs, are _in black_. She entirely quits all the _vanities_ of life; she only allows her maid to _smooth_ her hair. She suffers her hands and face to be washed, but never paints her cheeks, nor tints her eyelashes. If she go abroad, it is to the Temple to pray, or to the tomb (in some cases) of the "dear departed," covered from head to feet in thick black, followed by a tall footman, all black, bearing the _Sacred Rites_. If a man come too near, he is waved, with a solemn gesture of the hand, to remove away: this is the special duty of the _flunkey_. If, by any chance, the widow in her march happen to lift her thick veil, and catch the eye of a man,--ah! how dolorous must her prayers be! Precisely at the stroke of time, when twelve moons have gone, the widow drops all the _habiliments of woe_, and is herself again!--that is, a woman in search of a husband!--_if she_ have not, from clear, sheer desperation, and want of anything better to do, already pledged herself to her Priest or to her Lawyer. Now, free and at liberty to choose, she may wish to look further; but it is probable that "the inestimable services" of the Lawyer, in her time of misery, hold her to recompense; or that the Priest, attentive to the precept of the _Sacred Writings_ (which commands that _Widows shall be comforted_), has so well obeyed, that the Widow, completely solaced by the _dear, good man_, gladly rests with him!