For the average Englishman loved a funeral and all its ghastly accompaniments as passionately as though he had Irish blood in his veins, and often insisted upon investing the burial of his friends with the mockery, rather than the sincerity, of woe.
Grief thus became a pleasure, and it was a pleasure, be it added, which was not taken too sadly.

(Pardon the paradox.) The spirits of the deceased's many admirers had to be raised, and the enlivening process was set in motion by means of numerous libations, not of tea, but of lusty wine.

When the wife of mine host of the "Crown and Sceptre" left this world of cooking and drinking, the women who crowded to the good lady's funeral had to drown their sorrows in a tun of red port,[A] and it is evident that at the burial of men the grief of the mourners required an equal amount of quenching.

Indeed, the most absurd expenditures and preparations were made for what should be the simplest of ceremonies, and the result oftentimes proved garish in the extreme.

As an example of the display in this direction, John Ashton quotes from the _Daily Courant_ a report of the obsequies of Sir William Pritchard, sometime Lord Mayor of London.