Travels in the United States, etc.,: during 1849 and 1850./ By the Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley.

TRAVELS IN AMN'ER1ICA.
situation of the greatest beauty; and Nature and Art strive
together to perform, as it were, everlastingly the noblest funeral
obsequies around the tombs of the departed. Statues of angels
and weeping mourners stand by the graves among flowers and
trees; the air thrills with perpetual hymns of singing birds; silent
sermons are preached firom changing foliage and varying blooms.
All is touching, and beautiful, and hallowed, in that place, which
the imaginative Germans so poetically call "God's Acre." And
so it should be.
The Old Romans were the wisest of mankind, it is mny humble
opinion, in their way of disposing finally of their dead; and next
to them are the Young Americans! Death is not made unnecessarily and improperly gloomy and repulsive. The pale angel is
still an angel, and regarded as the one who, in opening the gates
of the grave, throws wide the portals of immortality.
It is the custom in Lima for a large clumsy hearse, drawn by
mules, and driven by a postillion, to go round in the morning, and
collect the bodies of those who have died in the preceding night.
The hearse, called the car of the Pantheon, brings them to the
cathedral, to receive the latest offices of the Church. Sometimes
the corpses are brought in coffins, and sometimes not. WThen the
latter is the case, a public receptacle is used during the performance of the funeral ceremony, which is made to fit all comers.
On returning from the cemetery, which is inclosed by high adobe
walls, we found it quite cold, and were glad to put onl additional
cloaks. Our hands were extremely chilled. There must be some
great difference in the climate or the construction of the houses in
Mexico and Lima. We have never found it cold in the houses
here (without fires, of course), while in Mexico-in the mornings
particularly-we often found it so. In Mexico, on the contrary,
I never found it cold out of doors; whereas here, several times
we have found it imperatively necessary to put on warm, thick
shawls on going out.
I am sorry to leave Lima before the religious fetes takle place,
for the city, from its many peculiarities, must present a very striking scene on those occasions. From all its nearly innumerable
churches and convents are floating then myriads of consecrated
banners, and from the houses, too, tens of thousands of" banderas"
are streaming with their gaudy hues on the flushed air.
The insides of the churches are adorned with a forest of artificial
flowers, and miles of festooning ribbons, and are besides decorated
with other ornaments, in almost endless profusion. Processions go
416