"The land service for the burial of the dead contains the following words: 'Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy, to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope,' &c. Every one I am sure, who has attended the funeral of a friend--and whom will this not include?--must recollect the solemnity of that stage of the ceremony, where, as the above words are pronounced, there are cast into the grave three successive portions of earth, which, falling on the coffin, send up a hollow, mournful sound, resembling no other that I know. In the burial service at sea, the part quoted above is varied in the following very striking and solemn manner:--'Forasmuch,' &c.--'we therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come,' &c. At the commencement of this part of the service, one of the seamen stoops down, and disengages the flag from the remains of his late shipmate, while the others, at the words 'we commit his body to the deep,' project the grating right into the sea. The body being loaded with shot at one end, glances off the grating, plunges at once into the ocean, and-- "'In a moment, like a drop of rain, He sinks into its depths with bubbling groan, Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.' "This part of the ceremony is rather less impressive than the correspondent part on land; but still there is something solemn, as well as startling, in the sudden splash, followed by the sound of the grating, as it is towed along under the main-chains. "In a fine day at sea, in smooth water, and when all the ship's company and officers are assembled, the ceremony just described, although a melancholy one, as it must always be, is often so pleasing, all things considered, that it is calculated to leave even cheerful impressions on the mind." (Even Captain Hall, however, admits that a sea-funeral may sometimes be a scene of unmixed sadness; and he records the following as the most impressive of all the hundreds he has witnessed. It occurred in the Leander, off the coast of North America.)