unexpected
breaches in the conventional wall.

You know H----'s Book, I daresay. Ah! I saw a scene of mingled
comicality and seriousness at his funeral some weeks ago, which has
choked me at dinner-time ever since. C---- and I went as mourners;
and as he lived, poor fellow, five miles out of town, I drove C----
down. It was such a day as I hope, for the credit of nature, is
seldom seen in any parts but these,--muddy, foggy, wet, dark, cold,
and unutterably wretched in every possible respect. Now, C---- has
enormous whiskers, which straggle all down his throat in such
weather, and stick out in front of him, like a partially unravelled
bird's-nest; so that he looks queer enough at the best, but when he
is very wet, and in a state between jollity (he is always very jolly
with me) and the deepest gravity (going to a funeral, you know), it
is utterly impossible to resist him; especially as he makes the
strangest remarks the mind of man can conceive, without any
intention of being funny, but rather meaning to be philosophical. I
really cried with an irresistible sense of his comicality all the
way; but when he was dressed out in a black cloak and a very long
black hat-band by an undertaker (who, as he whispered me with tears
in his eyes--for he had known H---- many years--was "a character,
and he would like to sketch him"), I thought I should have been
obliged to go away. However, we went into a little parlor where the
funeral party was, and God knows it was miserable enough, for the
widow and children were crying bitterly in one corner, and the other
mourners--mere people of ceremony, who cared no more for the dead
man than the hearse did--were talking quite coolly and carelessly
together in another; and the contrast was as painful and distressing
as anything I ever saw. There was an independent clergyman present,
with his bands on and a Bible under his arm, who, as soon as we were
seated, addressed ---- thus, in a loud, emphatic voice: "Mr. C----,
have you seen a paragraph respecting our departed friend, which has
gone the round of the morning papers?" "Yes, sir," says C----, "I
have," looking very hard at me the while, for he had told me with
some pride coming down that it was his composition. "Oh!" said the
clergyman. "Then you will agree with me, Mr. C----, that it is not
only an