being sold, is that the owner (who is married) has no further use for him.

A Blood of the first rate, very wild, and has run loose all his life, but is now broke, and will prove very tractable.

An Hackney Writer, troubled with the farcy, broken-winded, and very poor...would be glad to be released from his present master, a bookseller, and bear the less grievous yoke of matrimony. Whoever will take him into feeding, shall have his Pegasus into the bargain.

A Young Ward, now in training at Eton school... The guardian is willing to part with him to any lady for a round sum of money. If not sold, he will be sent into the country, and matched with his guardian's daughter.

Five Templars...all Irish...No one to bid for these lots of less than 10,0001. fortune.

Wanted...four dozen of young fellows, and one dozen of young women willing to marry to advantage.... to go to Nova Scotia.

W

No. XXXIX. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 24.

.Sepulchri

Mitte supervacuos honores.

HOR.

These but the trappings and the signs of woe. SHAKSP.

AS I was passing the other night through a narrow little lane in the skirts of the city, I was stopped by a grand procession of an hearse and three mourning-coaches drawn by six horses, accompanied with a great number of flambeaus and attendants in black. I naturally concluded that all this parade was employed to pay the last honours to some eminent person, whose consequence in life required, that his ashes should receive all the respect, which his friends and relations could pay them: but I could not help smiling, when upon enquiry I was told, that the corpse (on whom all this expence had been lavished) was no other than Tom Taster the cheese-monger, who had lain in state all the week at his house in Thamesstreet, and was going to be deposited with his ancestors in White-Chapel burying-ground. This illustrious personage was the son of a butcher in WhiteChapel, and died, indeed, but in indifferent circumstances: his widow, however, for the honour of her family, was resolved at all events to bury him handsomely.

I have already taken notice of that ridiculous affectation among the middling sort of people, which induces them to make a figure beyond their circumstances: nor is this vanity less absurd, which extends to the dust, and by which the dead are made accessary to robbing the living. I have frequently known a greater sum expended at the funeral of a tradesman, than would have kept his whole family for a twelve

month; and it has more than once happened, that the next heir, has been flung into gaol, for not being able to pay the undertaker's bill.

This absurd notion of being handsomely buried, has given rise to the most contradictory customs that could possibly be contrived for the advantage of deathhunters. As funerals are at present conducted, all distinction is lost among us; and there is no more difference between the duke and the dancing-master in the manner of their burial, than is to be found between their dust in the grave. It is easy to account for the introduction of the hearse and mourning-coach in our funeral ceremonies; though their propriety is entirely destroyed by the promiscuous use of them. Our ancient and noble families may be supposed to have particular family-vaults near their mansion-houses in the country, and in which their progenitors have been deposited for ages. It is therefore very natural, that persons of distinction, who had been used to be conveyed to their country-seats by a set of horses, should be also transmitted to their graves by the same number; and be attended with the same magnificence at their deaths, which they had been accustomed to in their lives. But the spirit of affecting the manners of the great has made the lowest plebeians vie with people of quality in the pomp of their burials: a tradesman, who has trudged on foot all his life, shall be carried after death, scarce an hundred yards from his house with the equipage and retinue of a lord; and the plodding cit, whose ambition never soared beyond the occasional one-horse chair, must be dragged to his long home by six horses. Such an ill-timed ostentation of grandeur appears to me no less ridiculous than the vanity of the highwayman, who sold his body to the surgeon that he might hire a mourning-coach, and go to the gallows like a gentleman...

There is another custom, which was doubtless first introduced by the great, but has been since adopted by others, who have not the least title to it. The herald's office was originally instituted for the distinction and preservation of gentility; and nobody is allowed to bear a coat of arms unless it is peculiarly appropriated to the family, and the bearer himself is entitled to that honourable badge. From this consideration we may account for the practice of hanging the hearse round with escutcheons, on which the arms of the deceased were blazoned, and which served to denote whose ashes it conveyed. For the same purpose, an atchievement was afterwards fixed over the door of the late habitation of the deceased. The ensign of death may fairly be indulged, where the persons are ennobled by their birth or station, and where it serves to remind the passer-by of any great or good actions performed by the deceased, or to inspire the living with an emulation of their virtues. But why, forsooth, cannot an obscure or insignificant creature go out of the world, without advertising it by the atchievement? For my part, I generally consider it as a bill on an empty house, which serves the widow to acquaint us, that the former tenant is gone, and that another occupier is wanted in his room. Many families have, indeed, been very much perplexed in making out their right to this mark of gentility, and great profit has arisen to the herald's office by the purchase of arms for this purpose. Many a worthy tradesman of plebeian extraction has been made a gentleman alter his decease by the courtesy of his undertaker; and I once knew a keeper of a tavern, who not being able to give. any account of his wife's genealogy, put up his sign, the King's Arms, for an atchievement at her death.

It was the custom, in the time of the plague, to fix a mark on those houses, in which any one had died.. This probably may have given rise to the general

fashion of hanging up an atchievement. However this be, it is now designed as a polite token, that a death has happened in the family; and might reasonably be understood as a warning to keep people from intruding on their grief. No such thing is, indeed, intended by it; I am therefore of opinion, that it ought every where to be taken down after the first week. Whatever outward signs of mourning may be preserved, no regard is ever paid to them within: the same visitings, the same card-playings, are carried on as before; and so little respect is shewn to the atchievement, that if it happens (as it often does) to intersect one of the windows in the grand apartment, it is occasionally removed, whenever the lady dowager gives a grand

entertainment.

This naturally leads me to consider how much "the "customary suits of solemn black," and the other "trappings and signs of woe," are become a mere farce and matter of form only. When a person of distinction goes out of the world, not only the relations, but the whole household, must be cloathed in sable. The kitchen wench scours her dishes in crape, and the helper in the stables rubs down his horses in black leathern breeches. Every thing must put on a dismal appearance: even the coach must be covered and lined with black. This last particular, it is reasonable to imagine, is intended (like a death's head on the toilette) to put the owner constantly in mind, that the pomp of the world and all gay pursuits are but vain and perishable. Yet what is more common, than for these vehicles to wait at the doors of the theatres, the opera-house, and other public places of diversion? Those, who are carried in them, are as little affected by their dismal appearance, as the horses that draw them; and I once saw with great surprise an harlequin, a scaramouch, a shepherdess, and a black sattin