contain funeral monuments as unutterably ugly and tasteless as any thing
of the kind I ever saw at home; but the dead, for the most part, lie in
graves marked merely by little iron crosses in the narrow and roofless
space walled in from the lagoon, which laps sluggishly at the foot of the
masonry with the impulses of the tide. The old monastery was abolished in
1810, and there is now a convent of Reformed Benedictines on the island,
who perform the last service for the dead.

On the day of which I speak, I was taking a friend to see the objects of
interest at San Michele, which I had seen before, and the funeral
procession touched at the riva of the church just as we arrived. The
procession was of one gondola only, and the pallbearers were four pleasant
ruffians in scarlet robes of cotton, hooded, and girdled at the waist.
They were accompanied by a priest of a broad and jolly countenance, two
grinning boys, and finally the corpse itself, severely habited in an
under-dress of black box, but wearing an outer garment of red velvet,
bordered and tasseled gayly. The pleasant ruffians (who all wore smoking-
caps with some other name) placed this holiday corpse upon a bier, and
after a lively dispute with our gondolier, in which the compliments of the
day were passed in the usual terms of Venetian chaff, lifted the bier on
shore and set it down. The priest followed with the two boys, whom he
rebuked for levity, simultaneously tripping over the Latin of a prayer,
with his eyes fixed on our harmless little party as if we were a funeral,
and the dead in the black box an indifferent spectator Then he popped down
upon his knees, and made us a lively little supplication, while a blind
beggar scuffled for a lost soldo about his feet, and the gondoliers
quarreled volubly. After which, he threw off his surplice with the air of
one who should say his day's work was done, and preceded the coffin into
the church.