that passed, that I have every scene before my eyes.

You crowd me, Sir, methinks, into the silent slow procession--now with
the sacred bier, do I enter the awful porch; now measure I, with solemn
paces, the venerable aisle; now, ambitious of a relationship to her,
placed in a pew near to the eye-attracting coffin, do I listen to the
moving eulogy; now, through the buz of gaping, eye-swoln crowds, do I
descend into the clammy vault, as a true executor, to see that part of
her will performed with my own eyes. There, with a soul filled with
musing, do I number the surrounding monuments of mortality, and
contemplate the present stillness of so many once busy vanities, crowded
all into one poor vaulted nook, as if the living grudged room for the
corpse of those for which, when animated, the earth, the air, and the
waters, could hardly find room. Then seeing her placed at the feet of
him whose earthly delight she was; and who, as I find, ascribes to the
pleasure she gave him the prolongation of his own life;* sighing, and
with averted face, I quit the solemn mansion, the symbolic coffin, and,
for ever, the glory of her sex; and ascend with those, who, in a few
years, after a very short blaze of life, will fill up other spaces of the
same vault, which now (while they mourn only for her, whom they jointly
persecuted) they press with their feet.


* See Vol. I. Letter V.


Nor do your affecting descriptions permit me here to stop; but, ascended,
I mingle my tears and my praises with those of the numerous spectators.
I accompany the afflicted mourners back to their uncomfortable mansion;
and make one in the general concert of unavailing woe; till retiring as I