A late Bishop Suffragan of Shrewsbury directed that he should be buried in the simplest possible manner, in an earthen grave which was to be covered with a low plinth bearing the words, “Not worthy of the least of all the mercies which Thou hast shewed unto Thy servant,” and earnestly entreated that no attempt should be made to raise any public memorial in his honour. Father Tyrrell, in a document dated January 1, 1909, wished nothing to be written on his grave except his name and the statement that he was a Catholic priest, with the addition only of the emblem of the Chalice and the Host. Less simple in the desire for simplicity were the instructions of a solicitor, who directed that his remains should be cremated and the ashes scattered in some plantation for restoration to the world which he had “found so delightful”; that his funeral should be conducted in the most unostentatious, private, and, indeed, secret manner, without advertisement or invitations to attend, and that no gravestone should be erected. At the particular desire of Edward Nokes, a miser of Hornchurch, whose niggardliness was extended to his funeral arrangements, none who followed him to the grave was in mourning, but each follower appeared in striking costume and the undertaker in blue coat and scarlet waistcoat. Such is the lamentable antithesis of a desire which is sometimes expressed, and with which it is easy to sympathise, that no black garments shall be worn. It is a desire which is, perhaps, increasingly common, though in the seventeenth century there are such conspicuous passages as Jeremy Taylor’s protest against undue lamentation and Bacon’s Essay “Of Death.” Sir John Monson (who is referred to on p. 202) makes it his last request that his wife and relations will not think that a loss to them which will be so great an improvement of his joy and happiness, and not make his crown their cross, but enjoy themselves and those earthly comforts God shall still bless them with in an holy submission and cheerfulness. Perhaps the ideal method in this question, difficult because of prejudice and custom, was attained by Christina Rossetti, who, at her grandmother’s death, was without black clothes, but wrote that she had nevertheless “managed to put on nothing contrary to mourning.” Recently a testatrix desired her body to be buried in quicklime in an ordinary grave, not a walled grave or a vault, and directed especially that no mourning should be worn and that the funeral service should be as cheerful as possible: another that her children should wear as little black as possible, and not shut themselves up, but go out among friends and to places of amusement. “I am not afraid of them forgetting me, but I want them to be happy.”