. But, like all tremendous creatures, he takes his
own way, and flies off at unexpected breaches in the conventional wall.

You know H----'s Book, I daresay. Ah! I saw a scene of mingled
comicality and seriousness at his funeral some weeks ago, which has
choked me at dinner-time ever since. C---- and I went as mourners; and
as he lived, poor fellow, five miles out of town, I drove C---- down. It
was such a day as I hope, for the credit of nature, is seldom seen in
any parts but these--muddy, foggy, wet, dark, cold, and unutterably
wretched in every possible respect. Now, C---- has enormous whiskers,
which straggle all down his throat in such weather, and stick out in
front of him, like a partially unravelled bird's-nest; so that he looks
queer enough at the best, but when he is very wet, and in a state
between jollity (he is always very jolly with me) and the deepest
gravity (going to a funeral, you know), it is utterly impossible to
resist him; especially as he makes the strangest remarks the mind of man
can conceive, without any intention of being funny, but rather meaning
to be philosophical. I really cried with an irresistible sense of his
comicality all the way; but when he was dressed out in a black cloak
and a very long black hat-band by an undertaker (who, as he whispered me
with tears in his eyes--for he had known H---- many years--was a
"character, and he would like to sketch him"), I thought I should have
been obliged to go away. However, we went into a little parlour where
the funeral party was, and God knows it was miserable enough, for the
widow and children were crying bitterly in one corner, and the other
mourners--mere people of ceremony, who cared no more for the dead man
than the hearse did--were talking quite coolly and carelessly together
in another; and the contrast was as painful and distressing as anything
I ever saw. There was an Independent clergyman present, with his bands
on and a bible under his arm, who, as soon as we were seated, addressed
---- thus, in a loud emphatic voice: "Mr. C----, have you seen a
paragraph respecting our departed friend, which has gone the round of
the morning papers?" "Yes, sir," says C----, "I have," looking very hard
at me the while, for he had told me with some pride coming down that it
was his composition. "Oh!" said the clergyman. "Then you will agree with
me, Mr. C----, that it is not only an insult to me, who am the servant
of the Almighty, but an insult to t