a procession bearing to its last home a body from which the soul had fled, which did not produce on the minds of the multitude a check if not a reflection, that the "deep, damp vault," where the departed is about to be shut from the light of the world and the converse of his fellow-men, was a mysterious hiding-place, into which secret the souls of the living did not wish to enter.
It was about midsummer on a sunny morning, when looking from the door of William Martin, in Cork, a procession unexpectedly moved before my vision, and never in the short space of a moment did more painful and pleasant remembrances pass in review. Painful, because were again presented the friends, who in my native land, one by one as they departed, rose in succession before me, and because I knew there were sorrowing hearts in that train—and mine well knew the pangs of such; but pleasant, because in the comely throng, who with slow and solemn step measured the distance, the unnatural custom which mock fashion has introduced was not manifest. Woman was in that procession, precisely the procession where she belongs—woman, whose heart emphatically can "weep with those that weep,"—woman, who loves to the last, and acts to the last; why, tell us why, should she not follow to the narrow, dark house, the relative she has cherished, or the neighbor she has valued and loved; the friend with whom she may have taken "sweet counsel, and walked to the house of God in company?" Why should she not go "in company" now "to the
