order, to which the deceased was especially addicted during life. In this manner the procession begins to move after sunset, preceded by a tall silver cross, beadles, &c.; friars, priests, &c. chanting the De Profundis through the principal streets to the church where it is intended it should be interred. The effect, with some abatements for boys following to pick up the drippings of the torches, and the perfect indifference of the assistants, for neither friends nor relatives attend, is certainly very solemn. The deep hoarse recitative of the psalm, the strange phantom-like appearance of the fraternities, the flash and glare of the torches which they carry, on the face of the dead; the dead body itself, in all the appalling nakedness of mortality, but still mocked with the tawdry images of this world, in the flowers and tinsel and gilding which surround it; the quick swinging motion with which it is hurried along, and with which it comes trenching, when one least expects it, on all the gaieties and busy interests of existence (for at this hour the Corso and the Caffés are most crowded)--all this, without any reference to the intrinsic solemnity of such a scene, is calculated, as mere stage effect, powerfully to stir up the sympathies and imagination of a stranger. On the inhabitants, as might be apprehended, such pageants have long since lost all their influence; and I have seen a line extending down a whole street, without deranging a single lounger from his seat, or interrupting for an instant the pleasures of ice-eating and punch-drinking, which generally takes place in the open air. Whether this passion for bringing into coarse contact, as is often the case, both life and death, the gloomy and the gay, be constitutional or traditional, I know not; but a traveller can scarcely fail of being struck with the prevalence of the feeling and practice amongst southern nations at all periods of their history, and finding in the modern inhabitants of those favoured regions, frequent resemblances to that strange spirit of melancholy voluptuousness, which travelled onward from Egypt to Greece, and from Greece, together with the other refinements of her philosophy, into the greater part of Italy. On reaching the church, unless the wealth and situation of the departed can permit the consolation or the vanity of a high mass, the body is immediately committed to the tomb. Such at least is the practice at Rome; and there are few who have not witnessed with disgust the indecent haste of the few attendants by whom this portion of the last rites is usually despatched. In the country, and in smaller towns, the corpse is usually exposed for at least a day: I know few exceptions, from Trent to Naples. It is generally an affecting ceremony. One of the most touching instances of the kind I can remember, was the exposure of a young girl, who had just died in the flush of beauty in a small village in Tuscany. I was passing through at the time, and