The Greeks were often very extravagant in their funerals.
Many persons, ornamented with garlands, followed the corpse, while
others were employed in singing and dancing before it. At the funerals
of the great, among the Romans, couches were carried, containing the
waxen or other images of the family of the deceased, and hundreds joined
in the procession. In our own times, we find a difference in the manner
of furnishing or decorating funerals, though but little in the intention
of making them objects of outward show. A bearer of plumes precedes the
procession. The horses employed are dressed in trappings. The hearse
follows ornamented with plumes of feathers, and gilded and silvered with
gaudy escutcheons, or the armorial bearings of the progenitors of the
deceased. A group of hired persons range themselves on each side of the
hearse and attendant carriages, while others close the procession. These
again are all of them clad in long cloaks, or furnished, in regular
order, with scarfs and hat-bands. Now all these outward appendages,
which may be called the pageantry of funerals, the Quakers have
discarded, from the time of their institution, in the practice of the
burial of their dead.
The Quakers are of opinion, that funeral processions should be made, if
any thing is to be made of them, to excite serious reflections, and to
produce lessons of morality in those who see them.
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