“BURIAL SOCIETY.

“A favorable opportunity now offers to any person, of either sex, who would wish to be buried in a genteel manner, by paying one shilling entrance, and twopence per week for the benefit of the stock.  Members to be free in six months.  The money to be paid at Mr. Middleton’s, at the sign of the First and the Last, Stonecutter’s Street, Fleet Market.  The deceased to be furnished as follows:—­A strong elm coffin, covered with superfine black, and furnished with two rows, all round, close drove, best japanned nails, and adorned with ornamental drops, a handsome plate of inscription, Angel above, and Flower beneath, and four pair of handsome handles, with wrought gripes; the coffin to be well pitched, lined, and ruffled with fine crape; a handsome crape shroud, cap, and pillow.  For use, a handsome velvet pall, three gentlemen’s cloaks, three crape hat-bands, three hoods and scarfs, and six pair of gloves; two porters equipped to attend the funeral, a man to attend the same with band and gloves; also, the burial-fees paid, if not exceeding one guinea.”

“Man,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.”  Whoever drew up this little advertisement certainly understood this appetite in the species, and has made abundant provision for it.  It really almost induces a taedium vitae upon one to read it.  Methinks I could be willing to die, in death to be so attended.  The two rows all round close-drove best black japanned nails,—­how feelingly do they invite, and almost irresistibly persuade us to come and be fastened down! what aching head can resist the temptation to repose, which the crape shroud, the cap, and the pillow present; what sting is there in death, which the handles with wrought gripes are not calculated to pluck away? what victory in the grave which the drops and the velvet pall do not render at least extremely disputable? but, above all, the pretty emblematic plate, with the Angel above and the Flower beneath, takes me mightily.

The notice goes on to inform us, that though the society has been established but a very few years, upwards of eleven hundred persons have put down their names.  It is really an affecting consideration to think of so many poor people, of the industrious and hard-working class (for none but such would be possessed of such a generous forethought) clubbing their two-pences to save the reproach of a parish funeral.  Many a poor fellow, I dare swear, has that Angel and Flower kept from the Angel and Punchbowl, while, to provide himself a bier, he has curtailed himself of beer.  Many a savory morsel has the living body been deprived of, that the lifeless one might be served up in a richer state to the worms.  And sure, if the body could understand the actions of the soul, and entertain generous notions of things, it would thank its provident partner, that she had been more solicitous to defend it from dishonors at its dissolution, than careful to pamper it with good things in the time of its union.  If Caesar were chiefly anxious at his death how he might die most decently, every Burial Society may be considered as a club of Caesars.