in fine linen; white with the Greeks and
black with the Romans. If the departed was
a person of rank, he was clothed in his
garments of ceremony, kept for seven days during
the preparations for the funeral, and lay in
state in the vestibule of his house, at the door
of which were placed branches of pine or
cypress, together with the hair of the
deceased, which had been consecrated to the
infernal deities. In Rome, between death and
burial seven days elapsed. The funeral was
attended by the friends and relatives of the
deceased, who were bidden by a herald,
pronouncing the invitation:—'It is time for
whoever wishes, to go to the funeral of N. son
of N.; who is now to be borne from home.'*

*'Exequias N., N. filii, quibus est commodus ire, tempus est:
ollus (ille) ex ædibus effertur.'

The remains of persons who had done
service to the state were honoured by the
attendance of public officers, and sometimes
the procession was followed by large bodies
of the people. According to one of the laws
of Solon, the Athenians carried out the bodies
of the dead before sunrise, especially the
young, in order that the orb of day might not
throw his light on so sad a spectacle, or by
his heat induce decomposition prematurely.
The body was laid on a bier, crowned with
flowers, and having the face exposed. The
bier was followed by the funeral procession,
among whom, at Roman funerals, there was
often a mime, or buffoon, wearing the dress
of the deceased, and giving satirical imitations
of his bearing and manners. At the
funeral of the Emperor Vespasian, the lustre
of whose many virtues was tarnished by love
of money, a celebrated buffoon (as Suetonius
tells us) acted the part of the emperor,—
mimicking, as was customary, the deportment
and language of the deceased. Having asked
the managers of the funeral what would be
the amount of its expense, and being answered
that it would cost a sum equivalent to eighty-
thousand pounds, he replied, that if they
would give him eight hundred, he would
throw himself into the Tiber—for drowning
was thought so revolting a death, that bodies
rejected by the waves were denied sepulture.
The bust of the deceased, his warlike trophies,
or decorations of honour, were conspicuously
exhibited in the procession. His family
followed the bier, walking bareheaded and
bare-footed, with dishevelled hair, and mourning
dresses of black; and after them came bands
of hired mourners, male and female, who rent
the air with cries and lamentations. Thus the
body was conveyed to the place of sepulture.

The claims to antiquity vaunted by the
Chinese next force upon attention their
provisions against allowing the dead to interfere
with the well-being of the living. As they
believe themselves perfect, to alter any one
custom is sacrilege punishable with death;
hence they observe the same ceremonies now,
that their ancestors did several thousand years
ago. 'Their tombs and sepulchres,' says Mr.
Sirr, 'are always built outside the city walls,
and usually upon a hill, which is planted with
cypress and pine trees.' In China nothing is
so offensive to good breeding as the remotest
allusion to death. A number of amusing
periphrases are therefore resorted to when a hint
of the subject is unavoidable; a funeral is
called from the kind of mourning used: 'A
white affair.'

In Persia intramural burials are also
forbidden. 'The place of sepulture,' says a Persian
sage, 'must be far from dwellings: near it
must be no cultivation; nor the business
necessarily attending the existence of dwellings;
no habitation nor population must be near
it.' This is another ancient injunction in
remarkable accordance with one of the
recommendations of our modern sages, the Board of
Health.

The Mahommedans again show much
better taste than Christians in their
Mausoleums and burial-places—they never bury
in their temples or within the walls of a town.

Among the funeral customs of the other
inhabitants of the East, that of burning the
dead is of very great antiquity. The Jews
adopted it only in emergencies. When Saul
fell on the fatal field of Gilboa, and his body
was left exposed by the enemy, it was burnt
by his faithful followers (1 Samuel, chap. xxxi.,
v. 11—13). From a passage in the book of
Amos (chap. vi., v. 10), it appears that the
bodies of the dead were burnt in times of
pestilence, no doubt on sanitary grounds. For the
same reason, incineration has been habitually
perpetuated in tropical climates, but has been
accompanied unhappily with the most horrible
superstitions, particularly in Hindustan, where
it is associated with the self-sacrifice of the
widow on the funeral pile of her dead
husband. The origin of this last custom, as a
religious rite, has been the subject of much
investigation and discussion among learned
Orientalists; but Colebrooke, in his paper on
the ' Duties of a Faithful Hindoo Widow,' in
the fourth volume of the Asiatic Researches,
has shown that this, among other duties of a
faithful widow, is prescribed by the ancient
Sanscrit books of the Bramins. Bernier, the
French traveller, who visited India at the
time when this practice of self-immolation
was very general, gives striking descriptions
of several scenes of this kind which he
witnessed. The heroine of one of them was a
woman who had been engaged in some love
intrigues with a young Mahommedan, her
neighbour, who was a tailor, and could play
finely on the tabor. This woman, in the
hopes of marrying her paramour, poisoned her
husband, and then told the tailor that it was
time for them to elope together, as they had
projected, as, otherwise, she should be obliged
to burn herself. The young man, fearing lest
he might be entangled in a dangerous affair,
flatly refused. The woman, expressing no
surprise, went to her relations and informed
them of the sudden death of her husband,