This may be bravery or cowardice; they may think thus to reconcile themselves by degrees to that which they scarcely dare face in all its reality. But to rehearse the funeral in full, even to the laying out the gloves and hat-bands, and to the examination of the accounts of the "forty per cents," if it became a fashion, would doubtless ruin the trade. For if men themselves were not satisfied with the rehearsal, their heirs would be. Milton rehearsed his, but that was to keep off the reality. There are many who profess to give up the world, to shut themselves up for the rest of their lives, who would do well to take this method of announcing to their friends their defunct state, that no further inquiries may be made about them, a practice which some debtors have found very convenient; for men desperately in debt, by so doing, like skilful divers, may plunge over head and ears, in the sight of their creditors, and come up elsewhere. That a rich man however should see himself dead and buried, and then sit down to write his own epitaph, and send it per post to his executors, would be past belief, if it were not to be found among the freaks of humanity. There is an example, Eusebius, within my and your memory. You remember Šir Giles the sceptic-of Park. It is generally supposed that he died abroad; but no such thing-by some means or other the truth has come out. Weary of property and prosperity, and of having no wants ungratified but the greatest, that of knowing what he wanted; morose, suspicious, misanthropic, he had long quarrelled with Providence for too amply providing for him; and more out of spite than conviction had long professed himself an atheist. At the age of seventy he meditated a new scheme of happiness; the only bar to the execution of which, for some time after the conception of it, being that it would confer happiness on others, a thing he never by any chance intended. He had for years shut himself up within his own domain, and had mostly taken his exercise by nightfall. In those nightly excursions he visited the owls, and the owls visited him, and they were mutually satisfiel that they had no other society. It occurred to him that the monks of La Trappe must be an improvement on them, inasmuch as there must be less noise in the convent. He formed therefore the scheme to become a member of their or some other monkish order. Whither he retired is not known. He left his beautiful domains, just at the moment his extensive lands and gar dens were putting on their best summer looks, and gently breathing in every wind "enjoy." This invitation was too much for him, for he was determined not to enjoy any thing. So he departed, osten sibly to pass a few months on the Continent. Thither he went, taking with him only one old faithful domes tic. He proceeded to the town of B- -. Having been there a few weeks, he opened his scheme to this old and tried servant, and made him solemnly swear to keep the secret, and perform his part in the scheme-to give out that he was dead-and to procure a mock funeral. And to se cure his fidelity, he showed him a very beneficial codicil in his will, not available but in case of his real or suppos ed death. I pass over the condition of the poor old domestic-he had served his master too long to dispute his will-and now there was a lurking wish that nobody else would dispute it. It had been law to him, and might be in the eyes of others. The plan is agreed upon. The old domestic becomes acquainted with some of the under attendants at the hospital of and by their means, under pretence that his master is a Professor of Anatomy, procures a body-conveys it to the lodgings-and all minor mat ters prepared for the deception, tells the people of the house that a friend of his master's had died suddenly while paying him a morning visit. The body, under the real name of his master is coffined, and magnificent orders given for the interment. Things being in this state, the domestic writes to the next heir an account of his master's sudden death; that he had been obliged to deposit the body in lead, and all was ready for the funeral, and "waiting further orders," &c. &c. The heir arrives, with little show of sorrow, and strange to say, this rather amused than offended the old gentleman, Sir Giles, who now under the disguise of a red wig and other ways and means of metamorphosis, at the recommendation of his servant to the Undertaker, has become one of the official attendants upon his own funeral. Every thing was magnificently ordered, as becoming the rank of so considerable a man. In his capacity of assistant Undertaker, he was initated into the mysteries, was even pleased with the sober riot and licentious decorum, the cheating, the pilfer, the knavery, and felt a new joy in his misanthropy. "Hung be the heavens with black." Though the undertaker spread showers of silk, and suspended as clouds his sombre broad cloth, they were to him but as Xerxes' arrows, that shut out the day, but did not hit the sun of happiness that now for the first time shone in his heart. Happy to him was the day of his death, but far happier that of his burial. He looked upon his heir as the fool that had taken the burden of his station and property off his shoulders; and as he would have only hated him the more had he shown any feeling on the occasion, he was quite indifferent to the degree of sorrow he affected or omitted to affect. After the funeral he walked away, no one ever knew whither, bequeathing as he fully believed to his heir, all the miseries of prosperity unalloyed. Among his papers were found his epitaph: RAYTA KOVIS KAι Ravτα το μηδεν. The old domestic has recently died, and bequeathed his money to the Ebenezer Chapel at T-, and had disclosed before his death to relieve his conscience, so much as has enabled me to tell you the story. I have only a word or two to add to this long letter, that in my spleen against all undertakers, that they may more effectually mourn in their professional calling, and get their "forty per cent" with entire impunity, I will remind them of the ancient discipline of their tribe among the Scythians, and sincerely wish they would return to it. Herodotus tells us, that when the king died, the undertakers who attended him, I will use the words of the historian, cut off part of one ear, shave their heads, wound themselves on the arms, forehead and nose, and pierce the left hand with an arrow. Having done this, they accompany the chariot to another district, and this manner is observed in every province, till having carried the dead body of the king through all his 66 dominions, they bury him in the country of the Garrhians." There is scarcely an undertaker's array, provided he be of any note, and has been long in the trade, that would not furnish the following list to be strangled-"a concubine to be strangled, with a cupbearer, a cook, a groom, a waiter, a messenger, certain horses." A Royal Funeral in those days was something worth seeing-for, not satisfied with the above, "they took the King's Ministers, fifty in number, and strangled them; and with them the King's stud, fifty beautiful horses, and after they have emptied and cleansed their bellies, the King's Ministers, they having been supposed to have filled them extraordinarily, they fill them with straw and sew them up again. Then they lay two planks of a semicircular form upon four pieces of timber, placed at a convenient distance, with the half circle upwards; and when they have erected a sufficient number of those machines, they set the horses upon them, spitted with a strong pole, quite through the body to the neck; and thus one semicircle supports the shoulders of the horse, the other his flank, and his legs are suspended in the air. After this they bridle the horses, and hanging the reins at full length upon posts erected to that end, mount one of the fifty they have strangled, upon each horse, and fix him in the seat by driving a straight stick upwards from the end of the back-bone to his head, and fastening the lowest part of that stick in an aperture of the beam that spits the horses. Then placing these horsemen quite round the monument, they all depart; and this is the manner of the King's Funeral." The Scythians were a sensible people. When Dr. Prideaux offered to the publisher his Connection of the Old and New Testament, the bookseller remarked that it was a dry subject, and he could not safely print it, unless he could enliven it with a little humour. Perhaps, my dear Eusebius, you will charge me with making such an attempt upon a grave subject. Be that as it may, I know very well that if I do not make you laugh you will laugh without me. Ever yours, THE TUTOR. CHAPTER L SCARFIELD is one of the old-fashion- intimacy may have been it is difficult ed villages that give such a charm to to conjecture, for two people more unthe rural scenery of England-not like than the scientific and literary quite so romantic as Miss Mitford's Ignatius and the fox-hunting, wine. Everlegh, nor so picturesque as Ken- bibbing baronet, can no where be more, nor so secluded as Callander, found. It has been surmised indeed, but a clean populous hamlet, buried that mutual convenience may partly in huge clumps of elms, with the smoke account for their friendship, for it was rising clear into the sky, and reveal- always remarked that a good many ing the habitation of man long before thick parchment parcels were visible the houses themselves are visible during Sir Wilfred's visits, and that among the windings of the lane. A for a few days after he had gone up post town at a distance of three or from Scarfield, he seemed to have four miles forms a link between it and amazing quantities of ready money. the world; a sort of mooring ring, This circumstance could not fail to attached to which the village rides strike any body who compared it with securely amid the constantly rising his usual state of impecuniosity; for waves of new events; and without Sir Wilfred is one of those extraordiwhich it would drift away into the nary individuals only to be met with vast ocean of oblivion. A river, too, in this land of attorney-stewards and like "Kennet swift for silver eels re- broad-acres; who are owners of magnowned," is another tie between it and nificent estates, and sometimes have the inhabitants of the rest of the world; only a faint recollection of the colour for few weeks pass in the fishing sea- and shape of a guinea. It certainly is son without sundry Viators and Pisca- a great defect in the economy of nators finding their way to the Crown, a ture that a man's income does not a small hostel, which stands aristocra- ways expand in proportion to his tically apart from the village, and family; and few people regretted this promises, on a board at the gate, mal-arrangement more bitterly than good entertainment for man and beast. Sir Wilfred. A stud at Newmarket, When we add to these the weekly which he had kept without feeling the visits of various pedlars and teamen, expense of it, fifteen years before, was miscellaneous beggars, and sometimes a dreadful draw on him, now that he in the summer a pic-nic party from had a son at Cambridge; and even the neighbouring town, we feel almost the pack of hounds he had started as inclined to alter our opinion of Scar- a bachelor, made prodigious inroads field, and to consider it entitled to on his fortune now that his wife had more respect than we were at first saddled him with Madame Carson's disposed to allow it. Whatever de- bills. It may seem strange that he gree of importance we may attach to did not give up Newmarket and his it, we are sure to receive the hearty hounds; but the thought never enter concurrence of our valued friend Igna- ed his head. He thought a great deal tius Hubble, F.R.S., who considers it oftener of his son giving up Cam unequalled in England, and has resid- bridge, and his wife deserting Madame ed in the principal mansion, called Manor-hall, for twenty or thirty years. His wealth, his learning, his having written and published a book, and at last his venerable age, and a pig-tail of unusual length, have made him universally acknowledged as the "principal inhabitant." The farmers take off their hats the squires shake his hand, and even the great Sir Wilfred Hammond, the owner of the estate, used not unfrequently to stay whole weeks with him, and make his house his home. What the cause of this but the son went on with his studies, my lady went on with her dress, Newmarket rejoiced in his racers, and Tom Herrick still hunted his pack. Mr. Fashy continued to "do for him," as in legal phraseology he expressed it, and Sir Wilfred about twice in the year paid a flying visit for a few days to our worthy and ready-money friend, Ignatius Hubble. Dear good old Ignatius! what a flood of good-humour inundated your countenance as day after day Sir Wilfred and you drew your chairs closer to the fire, if it were winter, and to the bow-window in summer, and passed between you the huge flat-bottomed decanter that held two good quarts of claret, and yet modestly called itself a bottle of wine! Not, oh venerable and esteemed Ignatius, that you were addicted to the pleasures of the table -falsely so called-or that you degraded the high character of a philosopher and a scholar by an unseemly regard for creature-comforts in a liquid shape, but simply because you knew that the good-natured visitor would be sedate and silent, prepared to swallow with pleasure and edification whatever you chose to pour into him-whether through the medium of a green glass nearly as large as a barrel, and in the shape of prime old Bordeaux-or through your own lips, tipt with celestial fire, and in the shape of an oration to which all the bees of Hymettus had contributed their honey, and no small portion of their hum. Then you knew that you might harangue to attentive ears on all manner of subjects on the adventures of your youth -the studies of your manhood-the reflections of your age-your discoveries in science-your experience in all things your disappointments in love! For you know you were disappointed, though you sometimes pretend you jilted the widow; Ignatius! it was the widow that jilted you. You've confessed it a hundred times to Sir Wilfred, and he has a hundred times forgotten the whole concern; for your communicativeness on such topics has generally reached its height when the aforesaid decanter was for the second time in the very act of enlisting in the marines; an incident which had a very remarkable effect on the memory of your friend. But hark! the drawing-room bell is vehemently pulled for at least the twentieth time, and a sharp, clear, precise voice is heard saying to Abraham Slocock"Are you certain you told the gentlemen that tea was ready?" So Ignatius is a husband?-perhaps a father?-a patriarch with his table quite overshadowed with olive branches? Ah, no! a bachelor has he been, and is likely to be to the end of time. And yet many of the comforts that only the weaker vessels, as we politely call them, can bestow, are in our excellent friend's possession-sour looks when he is not exactly punctual, and severe reprimands when he omits nearly throttling himself with vast rolls of handkerchiefs, if he puts his foot out of doors after mid-day, especially in an east wind. Yes! we may safely say that Miss Barbara Hubble, a spinster sister of mature years, contrives to make his home as agreeable to him as if he had a wife. The part of children is played to the life by George and Mary Hope--the offspring of a favourite niece whom Ignatius has adopted, and whom all the world have long ago set down for his heirs. "But the theory of education, my dear Sir Wilfred, is very insufficiently developed. The faculties are treated as if they were potatoes or turnips that had been planted at a particular time, and at another particular time were expected to come to maturity. The faculties, I maintain, on the other hand, vary so astonishingly, so much, and so greatly in the period of their acquiring the fulness of their growth, that sometimes they are in a very imperfect state even in old age. You have met with old people who were stupid, ignorant, dull ?" Sir Wilfred looked at his host through the mist that had begun to settle over his eyes, and observing that the old gentleman addressed the question to him in a very pointed manner, answered, "Oh yes, dull enough, my good sir; but with a bottle of such claret as this we can do very well, I assure you." "Well, sir, the cause of their stupidity, even in extreme old age, is, that they have not completed their education. The generality of mankind are not qualified for any place but school till they are fifty years of age. I myself, Sir Wilfred, was under a strict tutor till thirty-five; I have regretted ever since that he died when I had reached that period, or he might have continued his superintendence of me till the present time." "He would be a pretty old gentleman if he stuck so long on the perch,” hiccuped the listener. "Not much above a hundred, which, by a recurrence to the patriarchal mode of life, might again be rendered the prime of manhood. I myself, Sir Wilfred, feel as if I were still in the teens of my understanding; and with regard to your boy that you complain of, what is he but a babe ?-a suckling ?" "He sucks me pretty hard," said the baronet, emptying the bottle; "five hundred last term, and no chance that I can see of weaning him." "An infant without teeth, continued Ignatius," a creature scarcely in the dawn of existence, fit only for a rattle and long clothes" "Long clothes! exclaimed the baronet, who was no dab at metaphor, and could not make out what might be the meaning of all this nursery phraseology, "long clothes, my good sir? you mean long clothes-bills-do you know that you are talking of Arthur Hammond, my son, six feet high, strong as a horse, and waiting very impatiently for his first commission in the blues? and where the devil I'm to find the needful, Heaven only" "You misapprehend me, Sir Wilfred, I speak in figures. I give you the ideal presentment of an intellect still in the cradle, scarcely old enough yet to amuse itself with wooden horses". "A cursed deal too knowing a judge for that; no, Arthur has a good eye for a nag," muttered the father, who was again lost in a fog. "With but the experience of twoand-twenty years to enable it to grope its way through the dark places of this world; you must indeed, my dear friend, view the slight aberrations of such extreme juvenility with more philosophical eyes. In thirty or forty years more, I have no doubt Mr. Arthur Hammond will be a very steady and rational young man. Grant him a tutor, tis the only way." "A tutor for a fellow six feet high ?" My dear sir, if he were a walking pyramid it would make no difference. Tis of the intellect I speak-that may be of the very minutest tenuity while the corporeal covering is gigantic as the sons of Anak. But the tutor's business would be to model the plastic clay of the still flexible understanding into what shape he chose; he would curb, restrain, reward, and punish, till the youthful pupil ". "Would probably lay hands on the tutor's collar, and fling him into the nearest pond.". Tingting! ting! "Abraham, are you perfectly sure you told the gentlemen that tea was growing cold ?" "But the old girl gets impatient, my dear Hubble," continued Sir Wilfred, slowly rising, "and we can finish the rest of this business some other time." "No time like the present," replied Ignatius, pushing the madeira to his companion, who resumed his seat once more, "a tutor must undoubtedly be procured, and by way of setting a good example, I am on the point of engaging one's services myself." "You, Mr. Hubble? what do you want with a tutor?" "I have a nephew, Sir Wilfred, who turns out very differently from what I expected. Instead of feeding himself with solid food that would raise him up a Hercules among the sons of men, he stuffs himself with light unwholesome garbage-would you believe it, Sir Wilfred, he told me himself that he had not the slightest relish for Bacon." 66 Very bad taste, that's all; for 1 think a rasher with a few eggs or even boiled with good beansone of the best dishes a man can sit down to." "I allude not to eatables, my good sir," replied Ignatius; "tis food for the mind I talk of. Yes! George Hope has disappointed me. With Buffon and Cuvier in my hands, I have endeavoured for hours and hours to explain to him the formation, qualities, instincts, and habitudes of the animal creation. I even presented him at his repeated request, with two horses on which to conclude his studies in natural history; and in a month, one of them was found suspended by a huge iron spike run through its body on the top of a high gate in the hunting-ground of the Duke of Beaufort. How it got there is a mystery to me to this hour; and the other seized in all human probability by a fit of delirium to which the equine genus are liable, leapt over fifty hurdles in less than five minutes, and committed deliberate suicide by drowning itself in a broad ditch which intersects a line drawn between this church-tower and Highwell steeple." "He hunts and rides steeple chases," muttered the baronet, without being audible to the pre-occupied Ignatius. "He's a tight lad, young Hope, I must have him over to Hammondale." "I may say the same," continued Ignatius, "with regard to the principles of buoyancy and suspension. I |