150 PERPETUAL GREENNESS OF THE MOUNTAINS. Through winter, spring, and summer the difference has been barely perceptible. They seem, "green islands of eternal youth." Autumn I have not yet seen: some ferns will then turn brown, and the few poplars with their sere and yellow leaves will produce a trivial variety; but there can be none of that autumnal richness of colouring which makes the fall of the year perhaps the most beautiful season in our own country. In consequence of the great clearness of the atmosphere and the limited extent of these islands, as well as from their humidity and fresh green garniture, there is less of that opaline or purple haze commonly given by distance; which in our own climate adds to mountain scenery the fine aërial hues that painters delight in, and in Italy, invests the distance with "a purple bloom so inexpressibly beautiful." This scenery, however, though in these respects less picturesque, is very uniformly rich and attractive : there are no long wearisome tracts of desolate country among which, at tedious intervals, individual scenes of great attraction intervene, but a constant succession of lovely as well as of grand scenes. The skies, too, are most varied in this fortunate climate a monotonous cloudless expanse of blue never fatigues the eye with its sameness of splendour; but the mountains, attracting the abundant moisture of the surrounding ocean, (which would otherwise be too diffused to be so visible,) make out of this airy nothing substances on a scale of magnificence proportionate to their source, for the sun to paint of all hues and shades, from the quietest grey to the most gorgeous purple. CHAPTER X. Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. En songeant quelquefois aux élucubrations auxquelles la latitude de mon sujet m'a entraîné, j'ai eu sincèrement la crainte d'avoir pu ennuyer; car, moi aussi j'ai quelquefois bâillé sur les ouvrages d'autrui. BRILLAT-SAVARIN. Village funerals.-Sick poor. - Games. - Village Priests. Climate. JUNE 7. Returning from the bath this morning, I overtook a funeral procession hurrying along to the burial-ground. As John Quiet, though the procession was out of sight, gravely removed his hat and looked sedately on the ground, I asked him whether that was the cus A VILLAGE FUNERAL. 153 tom of his country, and finding that it was, uncovered my head also. A couple of swallow-tailed banners on high poles, the one white, the other black,—were borne in front by two men; behind whom was the clerk, carrying in his hand the priest's rusty hat, a broken white cup of holy water, a small brush, and a heavy wooden crucifix, with its hangings of purple silk. The priest a dirty man of six feet, like a village shoemaker, “marvellous ill-favoured,”—followed the clerk, indecently giggling with two acquaintances who walked by his side. The corpse, which was that of an old woman, was in the common open bier, and,-with a black veil over it, and the cold dead hands, long used to labour, clasped on the breast, -was decently dressed. The banner-bearer and bier-men wore, as did the clerk, loose gowns of yellow serge over their ordinary every-day dresses of blue and grey, and were, in common with the ten or twenty peasants who followed the body, bare-headed. Having set down the bier in the middle of the graveyard, and having arranged two bands of straw under the neck and heels of the corpse, in order to lift it from the bier to the grave, the service began. 154 A VILLAGE FUNERAL. The clerk lighted and dealt round six lanky tapers to the men in gowns, held one himself, handed the greasy mass-book and the water-brush to the priest, and, putting down that functionary's hat between his legs, stood erect, crucifix in hand, prepared to say the responses. The priest muttered through the prayers within three minutes, while the taper-holders twisting round and about to save their tapers from the draughts of wind that threatened to blow them out, grinned and jested with the bystanders at the straits in which they were placed." Refuse not gold," says an old divine, "though it come from an earthen pot;" and, accordingly, the holy-water, in a broken and bandaged white pipkin, was handed to the priest, who ended by dipping into it his small white brush and freely sprinkling the corpse. The body was lowered, -three idle children, sitting on the heap of fresh mould, amused themselves by rolling the earth upon the body, the people talked, -the clerk threw away the holy-water as if it were nothing worth, collected his tapers, hastily blowing them out lest the parish wax should be wasted,—the priest walked behind the grave-yard gate, pulled the surplice over his head, lowered the black gown down to |