Close beside the space allotted for the camels which make the long
caravans for Damascus, I came across the little English cemetery. It is
a quiet spot, surrounded by a high wall. The gate was locked, and there
was no way of getting within it. I could not tell where the key was to be
found; wherever it was, it was a long distance off, in the heart of the
city. So, by the aid of our dragoman, I succeeded in climbing to the top
of the wall, and seeing the one grave in which I was most interested—that
of Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of the “History of Civilization.”
Buckle had wearied himself out with literary work. His methods were not
the most wise nor expeditious. He was an indefatigable gleaner of facts,
and a patient gatherer of notes from all quarters, and he piled up his
note-books in great heterogeneous masses. He seems to have had but little
help, and not to have husbanded his strength. So, like many men who
begin to rest when it is all too late, he went off on distant travel. He
reached Damascus. His mind must have kindled afresh as he saw this city
of weavers and strange oriental combinations, and the thought of the long
and hoary history of the place. But he was too weary to think longer. He
lay down to die, and here he rests, under the shadow of the thick and
high walls of a little graveyard, where only seldom an Anglo-Saxon comes
to visit the sacred place. The accumulation of years is beginning to tell
upon the inscription. But it is still very legible, and gives the record
of his brief and toiling life.
There is something singularly touching in this little graveyard. There
are only a few graves, yet among them, besides Buckle’s, are several
English noblemen and titled ladies. The inscriptions repeat the story of
love and tears, as everywhere else. None who come here expect to die.
But the difficulties of removal are great. There are great and long
settled superstitions against the transportation of the dead in all these
eastern countries. The best way is to let our friends lie where they
fall, and to care for the perpetual beauty of their resting place. The
little graveyards of the Anglo-Saxons in all the eastern cemeteries make
a strange appeal to the sympathies. I have seen many of them, and always
they teach a new lesson of the suddenness of death, of the pilgrimage
which we call life, and of the burning love of those who remain behind,
and who write their words of tenderest affection upon stone in far-off
lands.