The Cemeterio degli Inglesi, or the Protestant burial-ground, stretches
calmly and beautifully below the Pyramid of Cestius. The site was
admirably chosen,--nothing can be more poetically and religiously
sepulchral than this most attractive spot. It is worth a thousand
churches. No one can stand long there without feeling in full descent
upon his spirit the very best influences of the grave. The rich, red,
ruinous battlements of the city, broken only by the calm and solid unity
of the Pyramid; the clustering foliage beginning to brown on the ancient
towers of the entrance; the deep, still, blue sky; the fluttering leaves
of the vines which floated around, as one by one they dropped from the
branches; the freshness of the green mounds at my feet,--these and a
thousand other features, fully felt at the time, but untranslateable to
writing, conveyed precisely that philosophy of Death which the poet and
sculptor have more than once attempted to breathe over their most
enchanting works, and which here seems an emanation from every object
which you feel or see. I would place in this spot their Genius of
Repose, that beautiful statue which joins its hands indolently on its
head, and casts its melancholy eyes for ever towards the earth; that
statue, so beautiful that it has been often confounded with the Grecian
Eros, or the Celestial Love, and is, in itself, the best type of the
messenger who is one day to lead us gently from the heat and toils of
this world, into the coolness and tranquillity of the next. Every thing
here is in unison with these thoughts. At a few paces distant from the
Pyramid, and adjoining the wall, the Cippi and funeral Soroi of the
Strangers are to be seen. The bright verdure and the bright marbles, the
classical purity of the monuments, the desert air, the austere solemnity
of every thing about me, came with new force upon my imagination. I
walked slowly amongst the tombs, and tried to decipher the inscriptions.
The dead are of various nations,--English, American, but principally
German. Sometimes a cluster of cypresses shadowed the tomb--sometimes a
fair flowering shrub had twined around it. The epitaphs were written
with elegance always; at times with the deepest tenderness and beauty.
Each had his short history, each his melancholy interest and adventure.
Here was the man of science and literature, who came to lay down his
head, after a painful and varied pilgrimage, in this City of the Soul. A
Humboldt was buried here; a Thorwalsden yet may. Here reposes clay too
finely tempered for the unkindnesses of mankind--Keats lies near;--a
little farther is one who, on the point of quitting Rome to rejoin an
affectionate family after a too long absence, full of the anticipations
of the traveller and of youth, is thrown from his carriage at a mile's
distance from the city, and never quits Rome more;--beside him is an
only child, whom the sun of Italy could not save;--and next, one who
perished suddenly, like Miss Bathurst, in the very bud and bloom of
existence,--or another, who died away, day after day, in the embraces of
her parents, and now rests in the midst of the beautiful in vain. The
graceful lines of Petrarch are inscribed on the sarcophagus--they are
full of feeling and the country, and make one pause and dream:--
"Non come fiamma, che per forza è spenta,
Ma che per se medesma si consuma,
Se n'andò in pace, l'anima contenta."