I have now, my dear Sir, complied with your request; and although I have endeavoured to avoid technical verbosity, and all unnecessary detail, yet I find my letter has swelled to a greater size than I expected. I shall be exceedingly happy to hear that any hint I have given has been serviceable to our friend. If the cough should still continue, after he has passed two or three months at Bristol, I imagine the most effectual thing he can do will be, to take a voyage to this place; he will by that means escape the severity of a British winter. The voyage itself will be of service, and at the end of it he will have the benefit of the mild air of the Campagna Felice, be refreshed and nourished by the finest grapes, and, when tired of riding, he will have continual opportunities of sailing in this charming bay.
As I was walking a few days since in the street with two of our countrymen, T—— and N——, we met some people carrying the corpse of a man on an open bier, and others following in a kind of procession. The deceased was a tradesman, whose widow had bestowed the utmost attention in dressing him to the greatest advantage on this solemn occasion; he had a perfectly new suit of clothes, a laced hat upon his head, ruffles, his hair finely powdered, and a large blooming nosegay in his left hand, while the right was very gracefully stuck in his side. It is the custom at Naples to carry every body to church in full dress soon after their death, and the nearest relations display the magnitude of their grief by the magnificent manner in which they decorate the corpse. This poor woman, it seems, was quite inconsolable, and had ornamented the body of her late husband with a profusion she could ill afford. When the corpse arrives in church, the service is read over it. That ceremony being performed, and the body carried home, it is considered as having no farther occasion for fine clothes, but is generally stript to the shirt, and buried privately.
“Can any thing be more ridiculous,” says N——, “than to trick a man out in his bed clothes after his death?” “Nothing,” replied T——; “unless it be to order a fantastical dress at a greater expence on purpose, as if the dead would not be satisfied with the clothes they wore when alive, but delighted in long flowing robes in a particular style of their own.”