t over him; that the lid
of the coffin would not go down; and that he was taken from
the dead-house and buried in the parochial ground, no
funeral rites having been performed on the occasion. It had
also been communicated to Mr. Hodgson and himself that,
after two days, the clergyman who was instructed to perform
those rites over the paupers, came and performed one service
for the dead over all the paupers who had been buried in the
intermediate time."

Now, without stopping to criticise the workhouse equipage, which
appears to be driven by a man too old to speak, with an idiot for his
companion; nor even to advert to the scant ceremony of burying a man
in his daily dress, and in a coffin that would not close on him--what
shall we say of the "patent parson power" that buries paupers in
detachments, and reads the service over platoons of dead? The reverend
chaplain feeling the uncertainty of human life, and knowing how frail
is our tie to existence, waits in the perfect conviction of a large
party before he condescends to appear. Knowing that dead men tell no
tales, he surmises also that they don't run away, and so he says to
himself--these people are not pressed for time, they'll be here when I
come again--it is a sickly season, and we'll have a field-day on
Saturday. Cheap soup for the poor, says Mrs. Fry. Cheap justice, says
O'Connell. Cheap clothing, says a tailor who makes new clothes from
old, with a machine called a devil--but cheap burial is the boast of
the Liverpool chaplain, and he is the most original among them.

A NUT FOR THE "HOUSE."

I have long been of opinion that a man may attain to a very
respectable knowledge of Chinese ceremonies and etiquette before he
can learn one half the usages of the honourable house. Seldom does a
debate go forward without some absurd interruption taking place in a
mere matter of form. Now it is a cry of "Order, order," to some
gentleman who is subsequently discovered not to have been in the least
disorderly, but whom the attack has so completely dumfounded, that he
loses his speech and his self-possession, and sits down in confusion,
to be sneered at in the morning papers, and hooted by his constituents
when he goes home.

Now some gifted scion of aristocracy makes an essay in braying and
cock-crowing, both permitted by privilege, and overwhelms the speaker
with the uproar. Now it is that intolerable nuisance, old Hume,
s