The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 284, November 24, 1827

ROMAN FUNERALS

The ceremonial of the funeral of a cardinal is considered as one of the most imposing at Rome, which is a city of ceremonies, and yielding only in magnificence to the obsequies of royal personages. The burial of the Mezzo-ceto classes is conducted rather differently. The body is exposed much in the same manner, at home; but the convoi, or passage from the habitation to the sepulchre, is generally considered as an occasion which calls for the utmost display. Torches, priests, psalmody, are sought for with a spirit of rivalry which easily explains the sumptuary laws of the Florentine and Roman statute-books, and which, unnoticed but not extinguished in the present age, in a poorer must have been highly offensive to the frugality and jealousies of a republic. The religious orders, the Capucins particularly, are in constant requisition; not a day that you may not meet two or three of their detachments in various parts of the city:–the religious or charitable fraternities, such as the Fratelli della Misericordia, of which the deceased is generally a brother or a benefactor, or both, think it also a point of duty and gratitude to swell the cortège, and in the greatest numbers they can muster to attend. Their costume, which is highly picturesque, is always a striking feature, and adds much to the brilliancy of the display. They wear a sort of sack robe or tunic, which covers the whole body, girt with a rope round the waist, and with holes pierced in the capuchon for the eyes; their large grey slouched hat is thrown back, much in the manner in which it appears on the statues of Mercury, on their shoulders; their feet are often in zoccoli, or sandals of wood, and sometimes, though rarely, bare. The colour of their dress varies according to the rule of their society; at Rome, I have noticed white, blue, and grey: at Florence they prefer black. The corpse is dressed up with great care, and often with a degree of luxury which would become a wedding; the best linen, the richest ornaments, are lavished; garlands are placed on the head; the hands crossed, with a crucifix between them, on the bosom, and the face and feet left quite bare. Sometimes, through a capricious fit of piety, all this is studiously dispensed with, and the body appears clad in the habit of some religious order, to which the deceased was especially addicted during life. In this manner the procession begins to move after sunset, preceded by a tall silver cross, beadles, &c.; friars, priests, &c. chanting the De Profundis through the principal streets to the church where it is intended it should be interred.

The effect, with some abatements for boys following to pick up the drippings of the torches, and the perfect indifference of the assistants, for neither friends nor relatives attend, is certainly very solemn. The deep hoarse recitative of the psalm, the strange phantom-like appearance of the fraternities, the flash and glare of the torches which they carry, on the face of the dead; the dead body itself, in all the appalling nakedness of mortality, but still mocked with the tawdry images of this world, in the flowers and tinsel and gilding which surround it; the quick swinging motion with which it is hurried along, and with which it comes trenching, when one least expects it, on all the gaieties and busy interests of existence (for at this hour the Corso and the Caffés are most crowded)—all this, without any reference to the intrinsic solemnity of such a scene, is calculated, as mere stage effect, powerfully to stir up the sympathies and imagination of a stranger. On the inhabitants, as might be apprehended, such pageants have long since lost all their influence; and I have seen a line extending down a whole street, without deranging a single lounger from his seat, or interrupting for an instant the pleasures of ice-eating and punch-drinking, which generally takes place in the open air. Whether this passion for bringing into coarse contact, as is often the case, both life and death, the gloomy and the gay, be constitutional or traditional, I know not; but a traveller can scarcely fail of being struck with the prevalence of the feeling and practice amongst southern nations at all periods of their history, and finding in the modern inhabitants of those favoured regions, frequent resemblances to that strange spirit of melancholy voluptuousness, which travelled onward from Egypt to Greece, and from Greece, together with the other refinements of her philosophy, into the greater part of Italy. On reaching the church, unless the wealth and situation of the departed can permit the consolation or the vanity of a high mass, the body is immediately committed to the tomb. Such at least is the practice at Rome; and there are few who have not witnessed with disgust the indecent haste of the few attendants by whom this portion of the last rites is usually despatched. In the country, and in smaller towns, the corpse is usually exposed for at least a day: I know few exceptions, from Trent to Naples. It is generally an affecting ceremony. One of the most touching instances of the kind I can remember, was the exposure of a young girl, who had just died in the flush of beauty in a small village in Tuscany. I was passing through at the time, and stepped by chance into the church. The corpse was lying on a low bier before the altar; a small lamp burnt above. Her two younger sisters were kneeling at her side, and from time to time cast flowers upon her head. Scarcely a peasant entered but immediately came up and touched the bier, and, after kneeling for a few moments, rose and murmured a prayer or two for the spiritual rest of the departed. All this was done very naturally, and with a kindliness which spoke highly for the warmth and purity of their affections. A similar custom still continues at Rome. The day after the execution of the conspirator Targioni, who suffered in the late affair of the Prince Spada, flowers and chaplets, notwithstanding every precaution on the part of the police, were found scattered on his tomb. He has been refused, for his contumacy in his last moments, Christian sepulture, and was buried in a field outside the Porta del Popolo. It is remarkable that, very nearly in the same place, the freedmen of Nero paid a similar tribute of affection to the mortal remains of their master. Garlands and flowers, the morning after his death, were also found upon his tomb.

New Monthly Magazine.

SLAVERY IN THE EAST

The slave in eastern countries, after he is trained to serve, attains the condition of a favoured domestic; his adoption of the religion of his master is usually the first step which conciliates the latter. Except at a few seaports, he is seldom put to hard labour. In Asia these are no fields tilled by slaves, no manufactories in which they are doomed to toil; their occupations are all of a domestic nature, and good behaviour is rewarded by kindness and confidence, which raises them in the community to which they belong. The term gholam, or slave, in Mahomedan countries, is not one of opprobrium, nor does it even convey the idea of a degraded condition. The Georgians, Nubians, and Abyssinians, and even the Seedee, or Caffree, as the woolly-headed Africans are called, are usually married, and their children, who are termed house-born, become, in a manner, part of their master's family. They are deemed the most attached of his adherents: they often inherit a considerable portion of his wealth; and not unfrequently (with the exception of the woolly-headed Caffree) lose, by a marriage in his family, or by some other equally respectable connexion, all trace of their origin.

According to the Mahomedan law, the state of slavery is divided into two conditions—the perfect and absolute, or imperfect and privileged. Those who belong to the first class are, with all their property, at the disposal of their masters. The second, though they cannot, before emancipation, inherit or acquire property, have many privileges, and cannot be sold or transferred. A female, who has a child to her master, belongs to the privileged class; as does a slave, to whom his master has promised his liberty, on the payment of a certain sum, or on his death.—Sir J. Malcolm's Sketches of Persia.

The Gatherer

"I am but a Gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff."—Wotton.

LEVEES

Secretaries of state, presidents of the council, and generals of an army, have crowds of visitants in a morning, all soliciting of past promises; which are but a civiller sort of duns, that lay claim to voluntary debts.—CONGREVE.