PROTESTANT BURIAL-GROUND AT ROME.
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."
No epitaph could be better. New Monthly Magazine.