There is certainly something more affecting in these prompt and
spontaneous offerings of nature, than in the most costly monuments
of art; the hand strews the flower while the heart is warm, and the
tear falls on the grave as affection is binding the osier round the
sod; but pathos expires under the slow labor of the chisel, and is
chilled among the cold conceits of sculptured marble.
It is greatly to be regretted, that a custom so truly elegant and
touching has disappeared from general use, and exists only in the most
remote and insignificant villages. But it seems as if poetical
custom always shuns the walks of cultivated society. In proportion
as people grow polite they cease to be poetical. They talk of
poetry, but they have learnt to check its free impulses, to distrust
its sallying emotions, and to supply its most affecting and
picturesque usages, by studied form and pompous ceremonial. Few
pageants can be more stately and frigid than an English funeral in
town. It is made up of show and gloomy parade; mourning carriages,
mourning horses, mourning plumes, and hireling mourners, who make a
mockery of grief.
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