We enter a city of antiquity—memorable Syracuse or disinterred Pompeii—through a street of tombs; the majestic relics of Egyptian civilization are the cenotaphs of kings; the Escurial is Spain’s architectural elegy; Abelard’s philosophy is superseded, but his love and death live daily to the vision of the mourners who go from the gay capital of France, to place chaplets on the graves of departed friends;[28] the grandeurs of Westminster Abbey are sublimated by the effigies of bards and statesmen, and the rare music of St. George’s choir made solemn by the dust of royalty; deserted Ravenna is peopled with intense life by the creations of Dante which haunt his sepulchre; Arqua is the shrine of affectionate pilgrims; the radiant hues and graceful shapes of Titian and Canova become ethereal to the fancy, when viewed beside their monuments; St. Peter’s is but a magnificent apostolic tomb; and the shadow of mortality is incarnated in Lorenzo’s brooding figure in the jewelled temple of the dead Medici. Even the dim, half-explored catacombs of Rome yield significant testimony to the Christian’s heart to-day. ‘The works of painting found within them,’ well says a recent writer, ‘their construction, the inscriptions on the graves,—all unite in bearing witness to the simplicity of the faith, the purity of the doctrine, the strength of the feeling, the change in the lives of the vast mass of the members of the early church of Christ.’[29]
What resorts are Santa Croce, Mount Vernon, Saint Paul’s, and Saint Onofrio! What a goal, through ages, the Holy Sepulchre! How the dim escutcheons sanctify cathedrals, and sunken headstones the rural cemetery! How sacred the mystery of the Campagna hid in that ‘stern round tower of other days,’ which bears the name of a Roman matron! The beautiful sarcophagus of Scipio, the feudal crypt of Theodric, the silent soldier of the Invalides, the mossy cone of Caius Cæstus, in whose shadow two English poets[30] yet speak in graceful epitaphs, Thorwaldsen’s grand mausoleum at Copenhagen, composed of his own trophies,—what objects are these to win the mind back into the lapsing ages, and upward with ‘immortal longings!’ We turn from brilliant thoroughfares, alive with creatures of a day, to catacombs obscure with the impalpable dust of bygone generations; we pass from the vociferous piazza to the hushed and frescoed cloister, and walk on mural tablets whose inscriptions are worn by the feet of vanished multitudes; we steal from the cheerful highway to the field of mounds, where a shaft, a cross, or a garland breathes of surviving tenderness; we handle the cloudy lachrymal, quaint depository of long-evaporated tears, or admire the sculptured urn, the casket of what was unutterably precious, even in mortality; and thereby life is solemnized, consciousness deepened, and we feel, above the tyrannous present, and through the casual occupation of the hour, the ‘electric chain wherewith we’re darkly bound.’ ‘When I look upon the tombs of the great,’ says Addison, ‘every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.’ Thus perpetual is the hymn of death, thus ubiquitous its memorials—attesting not only an inevitable destiny, but a universal sentiment; under whatever name,—God’s Acre, Pantheon, Campo Santo, Valhalla, Potter’s Field, Greenwood, or Mount Auburn,—the last resting-place of the body, the last earthly shrine of human love, fame, and sorrow, claims—by the pious instinct which originates, the holy rites which consecrate, the blessed hopes which glorify it—respect, protection, and sanctity.
There is, indeed, no spot of earth so hallowed to the contemplative as that which holds the ashes of an intellectual benefactor. What a grateful tribute does the trans-atlantic pilgrim instinctively offer at the sepulchre of Roscoe at Liverpool, of Lafayette in France, of Berkeley at Oxford, of Burns at Alloway Kirk, and of Keats and Goldsmith,—of all the bards, philosophers, and reformers whose conceptions warmed and exalted his dawning intelligence, and became thereby sacred to his memory for ever! How fruitful the hours—snatched from less serene pleasure—devoted to Stratford, Melrose, and the Abbey! To realize the value of these opportunities, the spirit of humanity enshrined in such ‘Meccas of the mind,’ we must fancy the barrenness of earth stripped of these landmarks of the gifted and the lost. How denuded of its most tender light would be Olney, Stoke Pogis, the vale of Florence, the cypress groves of Rome, and the park at Weimar, unconsecrated by the sepulchres of Cowper and Gray, Michael Angelo, Tasso, and Schiller, whose sweet and lofty remembrance links meadow and stream, mountain and sunset, with the thought of all that is most pensive, beautiful, and sublime in genius and in woe.
ACTORS.
‘All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.’
Jacques.
ramatic talent is far more common than is usually believed. In every family where decided traits of character prevail, it is spontaneously exhibited; and no intimate circle of friends in which a perfect mutual understanding and entire frankness exist, can often meet without an instinctive development of a propensity and a gift innate in all intelligent and genial minds; either in the play of humour, in graphic narrative, in skilful imitation, or the accidental turn of conversation, the dramatic appears, and we have only to look and listen objectively, to find the scene and the dialogue ‘as good as a play.’ Almost every community has its self-elected buffoons, its volunteer harlequins, and its involuntary actors, who, carried away by the spur of vanity or the overflow of enthusiasm, vividly represent either the ludicrous, the characteristic, or the impassioned in human nature. To the imaginative, observant, and susceptible, ‘all the world’s a stage,’ and men and women ‘merely players;’ or, rather, there are times when the aspects of society thus impress us. There is, too, a dramatic instinct in the very consciousness of imaginative and impassioned natures, who, to use the words of a woman of genius, yield to ‘un besoin inné qu’elles éprouvent de dramatiser leur existence à leurs propres yeux.’ A national dramatic language has ever been recognized in the responsive vivacity of the Italian manners, the theatrical bearing of the French, and the proud reticence of the Spaniard; these traits are infinitely modified to the eye of scientific observation; and are the direct and significant language of temperament, race, and character. It is, perhaps, because the elements of the dramatic art are thus universal, that its professors are so little esteemed, unless of the very highest order. It is certainly true of most of the celebrated performers that they have been unhappy, and averse to their children adopting the vocation.