"Very true, sir; therefore, you must have mutes. What is the expense, sir? Nothing, in comparison with the look of the thing."

"I always thought it worse than useless to lavish money upon the dead; so, every thing very plain, Mr. Mandrake."

"I shall take care, sir; depend upon me, sir everything shall be of the most comfortable kind, sir. And now, sir, for the choice of ground;" and hereupon, Mr. Mandrake lays upon the table a plan of the churchyard, probably divided into three separate parts for the accommodation of the different ranks of the dead. "Now, sir, for the ground."

"Is there any choice?"

"Decidedly, sir. This is what we call the first ground; a charming, dry, gravelly soil: you may go any depth in it, sir,-any depth, sir; dry, sir, dry as your bed. This is the second ground: a little damper than the first, certainly; but still, some respectable persons do bury there." On this, Mr. Mandrake folds up the plan.

"Well, but the third ground. That is, I suppose, the cheapest ?"

"Clay, sir; clay! Very damp, indeed; -you wouldn't like it ;-in winter extremely wet."

"Still, if the price be much lower than either of the others,"

"Very true, sir; it is, and properly so! or how would the very poor people be able to bury at all? You may, of course, sir, do as you please; but nearly all respectable families bury in the first ground. If it were my own case, I should say the first ground-such gravel, sir!"

"Well, I suppose it must be so."

"You wouldn't like any other; depend upon it, sir, you wouldn't. The first ground, then, sir;" and Mr. Mandrake departs, selfsatisfied that, for the look of the thing,-for merely the sake of his customer's respect ability, he has induced him to order feathers, mutes, and the first ground.

And in all this dealing what part of it has Death? Alack! the feathers are not borne before his cold, white face; the mutes march not with solemn step to do him reverence; the fine, dry, gravelly bed is not for the ease of death's pithless bones; they would rest as well in the third ground as the first. No; the trappings of the defunct are but the outward dressings of the pride of the living: the Undertaker, in all his melancholy pomp, his dingy bravery, waits upon the quick, and not the dead. It is the living who crave for plumes, for nails, double gilt,-for all the outward show of wealth and finery. Pride takes death, and, for its especial purpose, tricks it out in the frippery of life. "Man," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is a noble anlmal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave;

solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre; nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature." Hence, the Undertaker.

But we are speaking of the funerals of the rich, or, at least, of those to whom death is not made more ghastly, more bitter, more agonising, by poverty.

The Poor Man's Funeral.

It is the sabbath in London. Streams of people pour along the streets; everybody wears a brightened face; the whole metropolis makes cheerful holiday. All things move, and look, and sound of life, and life's activities. Carelees talk and youthful laughter are heard as we pass: man seems immortal in his very ease. Creeping through the throng, comes the poor man's funeral train: look at the Undertaker marshalling the way. Is he the same functionary who handed cake and wine-who deferentially assisted at the fitting of the mourning gloves-who tied on the cloak; or, who noiselessly entered the room, and, ere the screws were turned, with a face set for the occasion, and a voice pitched to the sadness of his purpose, begged to know if "it was the wish,-before-before-" and then shrunk aside, as some one or two rushed in agony of heart to take a farewell look? Is it the same Undertaker-is it even a bird of the same sable feather? Scarcely; for see how he lounges along the path: his head is cast aside, and there is in every feature the spirit of calculation.-What is he thinking of,

-the train he leads ?-the part he plays in the festival of death? No: he is thinking of his deals at home-of the three other buryings his men are attending for him—of his chances of payment-of the people who have passed their word in security for part of the money for the present funeral of the lateness of the hour-of his tea, that will be waiting for him ere the burying he done. How sad, how miserable the train that follows! The widow and her children; what efforts have been made-what future privations entailed, by the purchase of the mourning that covers them! Here is death in all his naked horror; with nought to mask his unsightlinessnothing to lessen the blow; here, indeed, he rends the heart-strings, and there is no medicine in fortune, no anodyne to heal the wounds. Follow the mourners from the church-yard home. Home!-A place of desolation; a cold hearth, and an empty cupboard. It is in the poor man's house that the dart of death is sharpest-that terror is added to the king of terrors. It is there that he sets up his saddest scutcheon in the haggard looks of the widow-in the pallid faces of the fatherless.

[BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY for this month is, as usual, full of interesting matter. We extract the two following delineations, from Mr. Mackay's Rambles among the Rivers:]

Vauxhall in the time of Addison. FAMOUS is Vauxhall in all the country round for snug alcoves, its comic singers, its innnmerable lamps, its big balloons, its midnight fire-works, its thin slices, its dear potations, its greedy waiters, and its ladies fair and kind. In Addison's time, Spring Gardens, as they were then called, were noted for their nightingales and their sirens; and Sir Roger de Coverley is represented as having wished there were more of the former and fewer of the latter, in which case he would have been a better customer. But in our day there are no nightingales, and the sirens have it all to themselves. But let that pass. If the age will not mend its manners, it is no fault of ours; and we must take Vauxhall, like other things, as we find it. Sterner moralists than we are, or wish to be, have thought it a pleasant place, and the old guide-books invariably designate it "an earthly paradise." Addison called it a Mahometan paradise,― choosing the epithet, no doubt, from the numerous houris before mentioned, and the admixture of sensual and intellectual enjoyments which it afforded.

Recollections of Chelsea.

Chelsea itself abounds in reminiscences, having been the residence of Sir Thomas More, of Holbein, of Pym, of St Evremond, of Walpole, of Sir Hans Sloane, and also of Nell Gwynne, and the Duchess of Mazarin, the mistresses of Charles, with a hundred other personages, celebrated for their virtue, their genius, their patriotism, their benevolence, or their beauty. There is an air of antiquity and sobriety about that portion of it which is seen from the river that is highly pleasing. The solemn, unassuming church, the sedate houses, and the venerable trees on Cheyné Walk, throw a charm around it quite delightful to the eye, which has dwelt too long upon the flaunting elegance of modern buildings, and the prim precision of new streets, that never by any chance afford room for a tree to grow upon them, aud rarely within sight of them. The visitor's eye cannot fail to remark about the middle of the walk a tavern, inscribed with large letters along its front, "Don Saltero's 1695." This is the place celebrated in No. 34 of the Tatler, which was opened in the year above mentioned by one Salter, a barber, made a don by the facetious Admiral Munden, who, having cruised for a long period on the coasts of Spain, had contracted a habit of donning all his acquaintance, and putting a final o to their names. This barber had a taste for natural history, and adorned his coffee-room with stuffed birds, reptiles, and dried beetles; and the singu

larity of his taste, for a person in his condition of life, drew him many customers. The Tatler describes the room as being covered with "ten thousand gimcracks on the walls and ceiling," and Don Saltero himself as a sage-looking man, of a thin and meagre aspect. Its appearance is somecuriosities of the don, have dwindled away what different now. The gimcracks, the old to two which still ornament the walls,-an old map of London and its environs; a painting of a ferocious Welshman with a Bardolphian nose riding on a goat, and armed with a leek and a red-herring, instead of sword and gun; and a label here and there about ginger-beer and soda-water. Instead of the meagre-looking sage, a bluff waiter enters at your summons, upon whose character you the thousands you may daily meet. The old cannot speculate, so dull is he, and so like host offered, on the contrary, a very fertile 6. Why," said the subject for the theorist. Tatler, “should a barber, and Ďon Saltero among the rest, be for ever a politician, a musician, and a physician ?" Ah, why, indeed ?-who can tell? To this day the barber is still the same. Go into a barber's anywhere, no matter in what district, and it is ten to one you will hear the sounds either of a fiddle or a guitar, or see the instruments hanging up somewhere. You will also find him a politician; or if not a politician, a great friend and small critic of the drama. Had we space, and it were part of our subject, we could discourse upon this matter lengthily if not learnedly, and also upon another question equally luminous, which has puzzled philosophers for many ages, "Why do all poor old women wear red cloaks ?" But we refrain, and continue our reminiscences of Chelsea.

In a house fronting the river, resided Sir Thomas More, about the year 1520. Erasmus, who was his frequent guest, describes it as having been "neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent enough. There he conversed with his wife, his son, his daughterin-law, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There was not any man living," continues Erasmus, "who was so affectionate to his children as he; and he loveth his old wife as well as if she were a young maid." Here Holbein shared this great man's hospitality for three years; and here also the royal brute his master, when he was in the mood to do him honour, came in regal state, and sometimes privately, to dine with him. Here also the noble-minded daughter of the philosopher buried the grey head of her unfortunate father, after having, at great risk, stolen it from the pike on which it was fixed at London Bridge, by the order of the bloodthirsty Henry VIII. If there are occasions in which the insensible sod can become hallowed and consecrated, an incident like

this ought in all true hearts to render it holy for evermore, - thither should pilgrims resort, and there should monuments be erected. Never did soil receive a mɔre affecting deposit than when the head of that sage and Christian, with its long white beard, was laid by filial hands in the garden at Chelsea. Pity it is that there is no memorial on the spot to guide the steps of the thousands who would think it a labour of love to visit it. The body was buried at Chelsea, in the south side of the chancel.

THE WONDERS OF PALMER'S VILLAGE,
WESTMINSTER.

BY THE IRISH OYSTER-EATERt. "WONDERFUL are the works of nature," as Mick Montague observed to me, on emerging from the puppet-show.

So they are, to be sure-and so is the farfamed city of Westminster.

The far-famed city of Westminster, as every fool knows, has a famous abbey. Now this famous abbey, in days of yore, was a sanctuary for thieves, robbers, murderers, and other pious reprobates, who took to their heels as soon as pursued by the myrmidons of the law; and, once they laid violent hands upon the hem of some old monk's garment, or got into the sanctuary, as this sink of perdition was called, they were forthwith as safe as the church, and snapped fingers at the constable -provided always they had money wherewith to fee the monks, in default of which they were incontinently pushed out of the sanc turay, and delivered over to the officers of justice. This refuge of atrocious criminals tended, no doubt, greatly to the honour and glory of God, and materially enhanced, in those days, the respectability of Westminster.

There was another class of semi-clerical scamps, who flourished in these days, and in this neighbourhood, called Palmerins, or Palmers, most reverend rascals, who, with a scrip on their shoulders, a scallop in their hats, and peas (boiled) in their shoes, went blackguarding round the country, under pretence of selling Saracen's heads, cut off in the Holy Land, and other relics-begging, * Margaret Roper did not steal the head of her father, Sir Thomas Moore; nor does it rest in Chelsea Church; for, in August, 1824, while making some repairs in St. Dunstan's Church, Canterbury, a box was found, containing the head of that venerable and virtuous man; it was much decayed, with the exception of the teeth, and was immediately restored to its resting-place. His daughter Margaret, wife of John Roper, Esq., of a distinguished family long resident in the parish of St. Dunstan, having privately obtained the head of her beloved parent, carefully preserved it in a box; and wheu she died, it was placed on her coffin, in the south chancel of the church, which is called the Roper chancel.— Ed. M.

+ From an admirable article in the last number of Blackwood's Magazine.

moreover, what they could beg, borrowing what they could borrow, and stealing what they could steal; and this they did, as all scamps of their pursuasion do, for the love of God."

The sanctuary has been abolished-the monks have been sent to the tread-mill—the most dreadful punishment that could possibly be inflicted upon their reverences-and the palmerins have gone to a tropical climate, which I only indicate as the antipodes of the Holy Land; nor would any body be a whit the wiser concerning the palmers, or palmerins, were not the hamlet, or collection of houses appropriated peculiarly to them, called and known as Palmerin's or Palmer's Village to this very day.

Of all the human burrows in and about London, there is not one comparable, in its way, to Palmer's Village, into which I followed my fair little guide, under an archway not much more than four feet high, close to the mouth of which stood a steam-engine of peculiar, and to me incomprehensible, construction-the engineer uttering at intervals a short and rapid guttural sound, which 1 then conceived to be a warning to passengers to avoid the engine, but which more matured experience has informed me is simply an announcement to the nobility, gentry, his friends, and the public, that his steaming apparatus contains" baked taters, a halfpenny a piece

-all hot-all hot!"

For the information of the curious in such matters, who may be induced by my description to essay the wonders of Palmer's Village, I take the liberty to observe, that, at the further end of the tunnel, or archway, aforesaid, is a step, over which new comers are apt to break either their shins or noses, which accident is facetiously called by the villagers thus paid, by your footing being lost, you paying your footing. When your footing is emerge into an alley or avenue, fifteen inches wide, or thereabouts, affording room for one person, and no more, to pass along, and fenced on either side with old barrel staves, broken iron hoops, and rotten paling of every variety of scantling. Within the fence, on either side this path-which, I should have observed, is neither paved, nor flagged, nor bituminized, but simply one aboriginal puddle from end to end-are arranged the gardens of the respective tenements, two or three palings being omitted from the line of palisade for the convenience of pigs and tenantry. No gardens, I am sure, from the hanging gardens of Babylon, to those of White Conduit House, can exhibit in the same space (two yards square each) the variety of ingenious devices that ornament the gardens of Palmer's Village. A bit of anything green is the only deficiency observable, but this is supplied by a curious artistical arrangement of puddleholes, dung-heaps, cabbage stalks, brick-bats,

and broken bottles. The tenements attached are like nothing on the face of this world but themselves-a sort of half-breed between hovel and wigwam, with the least trace of cottage running in the blood. There are two stories, with two windows to each, in the face of these extraordinary village edificesthe window containing, on an average, three old hats, one flannel petticoat, and two patched panes of glass-each; there was also to each house a doorway, and some had an apology for a door.

You are not to suppose that there exists only one avenue through Palmer's Village, or only one straggling street of the tenements above mentioned. There are as many avenues, lanes, holes and bores, as there used to be in the catacombs-houses huddled upon houses, without regard to discipline or good order; in short, were I a magistrate, I should feel inclined to read the riot act, Palmer's Village being strictly within the spirit and meaning of that enactment—a neighbourhood tumultously assembled !

The houses, individually, look as if they deserved to be fined five shillings every man jack of them, for being drunk. They had evidently been up all night, and wore an intoxicated and disorderly look, which no wellregulated and respectable tenement would disgrace himself by being seen in. Stooping under the rotten paling, I was at length received into one of the most taterdemalionized mansions, and, having picked my way up a worn-out stair to the two-pair back-a miserable place, wherein a counterpane of patchwork, spread over a little straw upon the ground, a broken chair, a stool, three bars of nail rod stuck in the chimney by way of grate, with a bit of the same material to serve for poker, a frying-pan, a salt herring and a half, perforated through the optics, upon a nail, a tea-kettle, and a smoothing-iron, made up the ostensible furniture of the apart

ment.

MODES OF EMPLOYING SERVANTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. (For the Mirror.)

The Ichoglans, in Turkey. THE Ichoglans are youths designed for the great offices of the Turkish empire. They must be of Christian parents; either taken in war, or presented from remote parts by Bassas. The Sultan, to make his subjects wholly devoted to him, established the Ichoglans, who are raised to the great places of the empire, as he finds them deserving. The best shaped, and handsomest, or those who evince any degree of talent, are instructed in all sorts of exercises and learning in the schools of Pera, Adrianople and Constantinople. They are brought up in the Mahometan faith, and

educated with great care under the severest discipline. White eunuchs being their Censores Morum, who treat them with extreme rigour, severely punishing them for the smallest faults, sometimes with a Falaka (a sort of cudgel) upon the soles of their feet, or else they have the hardest tasks to perform. They pass through four several chambers, called Oda, in which are 600 Ichoglans, where they are taught the demeanor suitable to be observed in the presence of a prince (or Anglice manners). Their names, age. and parents, are registered in a book, with their allowance, generally four aspers a day. Their chief food is rice; their beds are ranged in long rooms, where lamps are kept burning every night. When the Capiaga makes his general visitation, he turns out of the Seraglio all those he thinks incapable of doing their prince good service, and such as betray disgust at so austere a life; and then they lose all hope of ever entering the Seraglio again, and can pretend to no other office than that of Spahi, with but a very poor rate of pay: however, the advantages of capacitating themselves for the most eminent charges of the court and of the empire, make those who remain take courage and suffer patiently for some years, the harsh and unmerciful treatment of the eunuchs. The Oda is divided into four chambers:-in the first they are taught to read and write, and are initiated in the grounds of the Mahometan law; in the second, they are instructed (being now more robust) in manly exercises, throwing the lance, &c; in the third, they begin to be employed in the Grand Signior's, either the wardrobe or baths, &c., and are perfected in their riding and exercises; in the fourth, is the highest class of Ichoglans, which is limited to forty; these always attend near the Grand Signior's person. None, however, unless by special favour, are advanced from the Seraglio till they have attained the age of forty years, when they are considered mature for government offices. The latter class are generally clothed in gold and silver cloth, the others in meaner attire. C. P. S.

NEW CLASS OF THUGS. THE depositions made in certain recent cases of Thuggee, taken by Capt. Graham, disclose the existence of a hitherto distinct class of these atrocious criminals. The Thugs, to whom these depositions relate, differ both in their habits and the technical terms they use from the ordinary Thug, in whose community they may be held to occupy the position the Pariahs do among the people at large. They are known by the term Megpunnah, and prowl in small gangs over the country, murdering the poorest travellers for their children, whom they sell to courtezans, procuresses, and such persons, as well as dispose of in the larger cities, where slavery either exists, as in