And oh! how needless when the woe’s sincere.
The Parish Register.
[23]. Amongst the higher classes the tendency is to reduce the number of cases in which mourning is worn, and to diminish the time of wearing it. It would be a great boon to persons in inferior condition and of limited means, who are governed by the examples of those above them, and who are put to ruinous expense for putting a whole family into mourning, at a time when the expense can be the least spared, if the custom could be further altered to the wearing of a piece of crape only on the hat or on the arm, as in the army and navy; or by limiting the wearing of full mourning to the head of the family, and using only crape bands for the rest. Some conception may be formed of the inconvenience incurred by the extent to which mourning is carried, even amongst the poorest classes, if we suppose that on such occasions it were necessary to clothe the whole of the men of the army and navy in black. The very excess of deaths above a healthy standard in Great Britain necessitates mourning to nearly forty thousand families per annum. The extent to which custom has carried mourning appears to have no Scriptural authority. Bingham, speaking of the primitive Christians, states, “that they did not condemn the notion of going into a mourning habit for the dead, nor yet much approve of it, but left it to all men’s liberty as an indifferent thing, rather commending those that either omitted it wholly, or in short time laid it aside again, as acting more according to the bravery and philosophy of a Christian. Thus St. Jerome commends one Julian (Hieron. Ep. 34 ad Julian), a rich man in his time, because having lost his wife and two daughters, that is his whole family, in a few days, one after another, he wore the mourning habit but forty days after their death, and then resumed his usual habit again, and because he accompanied his wife to the grave, not as one that was dead, but as going to her rest. Cyprian, indeed, seems to carry the matter a little farther; he says he was ordered by divine revelation to preach to the people publicly and constantly, that they should not lament their brethren that were delivered from the world by divine vocation, as being assured that they were not lost, but only sent before them: that their death was only a receding from the world, and a speedier call to heaven; that we ought to long after them and not lament them, nor wear any mourning habit, seeing they were gone to put on their white garments in heaven (2 Cypr. de Mortal., p. 164). No occasion should be given to the Gentiles justly to accuse us, and reprehend us for lamenting those as lost and extinct, whom we affirm still to live with God; and that we do not prove that faith which we profess in words, by the outward testimony of our hearts and souls. Cyprian thought no sorrow at all was to be expressed for the death of a Christian, nor consequently any signs of sorrow, such as the mourning habits, because the death of a Christian was only a translation of him to heaven. But others did not carry the thing so high, but thought a moderate sorrow might be allowed to nature, and therefore did not so peremptorily condemn the mourning habit, as being only a decent expression of such a moderate sorrow, though they liked it better if men could have the bravery to refuse it.” (Bing., book xxii. chap. 3, sec. 22).
[24]. Dr. Bently states, that “allowing for much of fiction, with which such a subject must ever be mixed, there is still sufficient evidence to warrant a diligent examination of the means of discriminating between real and apparent death.” (Ency. Prac. Medicine, vol. iii. 316.) “As respiration is a function most essential to health, and at the same time the most apparent, the cessation of it may be considered as an indication of death. But as in certain diseases and states of exhaustion it becomes very slow and feeble, and so to the casual observer to appear quite extinct, various methods have been adopted for ascertaining its existence. Thus, placing down or other light substances near the mouth or nose; laying a vessel of water on the chest, as an index of motion in that cavity; holding a mirror before the mouth, in order to condense the watery vapour of the breath; have all been proposed and employed, but they are all liable to fallacy. Down, or whatever substance is employed, may be moved by some agitation of the surrounding air; and the surface of the mirror may be apparently covered by the condensed vapour of the breath, when it is only the fluid of some exhalation from the surface of the body. We therefore agree fully with the judicious observations of Dr. Paris on this subject:—‘We feel no hesitation in asserting, that it is physiologically impossible for a human being to remain more than a few minutes in such a state of asphyxia as not to betray some sign by which a medical observer can at once recognize the existence of vitality; for if the respiration be only suspended for a short interval we may conclude that life has fled for ever. Of all the acts of animal life, this is by far the most essential and indisputable. Breath and life are very properly considered in the scriptures as convertible terms, and the same synonym, as far as we know, prevails in every language. However slow and feeble respiration may become by disease, yet it must always be perceptible, provided the naked breast and belly be exposed; for when the intercostal muscles act, the ribs are elevated, and the sternum is pushed forwards; when the diaphragm acts the abdomen swells. Now this can never escape the attentive eye; and by looking at the chest and belly we shall form a safer conclusion than by the popular methods which have been usually adopted.’”
The looking-glass and the feather have been the standing test for time immemorial. When Lear enters with Cordelia dead in his arms, he says:—
“I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth.—Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives.
Kent.—Is this the promis’d end?