n pleas for a little
respite; her sentence, and its execution; has not felt a shock of pity?
When the days of a long life come to its close, and a white head sinks
to rise no more, we bow our own with respect as the mourning train
passes, and salute the heraldry and devices of yonder pomp, as symbols
of age, wisdom, deserved respect and merited honour; long experience
of suffering and action. The wealth he may have achieved is the harvest
which he sowed; the titles on his hearse, fruits of the field he bravely
and laboriously wrought in. But to live to fourscore years, and be found
dancing among the idle virgins! to have had near a century of allotted
time, and then be called away from the giddy notes of a Mayfair fiddle!
To have to yield your roses too, and then drop out of the bony clutch of
your old fingers a wreath that came from a Parisian bandbox! One fancies
around some graves unseen troops of mourners waiting; many and many a
poor pensioner trooping to the place; many weeping charities; many kind
actions; many dear friends beloved and deplored, rising up at the toll
of that bell to follow the honoured hearse; dead parents waiting above,
and calling, "Come, daughter!" lost children, heaven's fondlings,
hovering round like cherubim, and whispering, "Welcome, mother!" Here
is one who reposes after a long feast where no love has been; after
girlhood without kindly maternal nurture; marriage without affection;
matronhood without its precious griefs and joys; after fourscore years
of lonely vanity. Let us take off our hats to that procession too as it
passes, admiring the different lots awarded to the children of men, and
the various usages to which Heaven puts its creatures.

Leave we yonder velvet-palled box, spangled with fantastic heraldry, and
containing within the aged slough and envelope of a soul gone to render
its account. Look rather at the living audience standing round the
shell;--the deep grief on Barnes Newcome's fine countenance; the sadness
depicted in the face of the most noble the Marquis of Farintosh; the
sympathy of her ladyship's medical man (who came in the third mourning
carriage); better than these, the awe, and reverence, and emotion,
exhibited in the kind face of one of the witnesses of this scene, as he
listens to those words which the priest rehearses over our dead. What
magnificent words! what a burning faith, what a glorious triumph; what
a heroic life, death, hope, they record! They are r