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 cortege, 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 Caffes 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