"Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each."
Shelley has left no poet behind, who could write so touchingly of his burial-place in turn. He was, indeed, as they have graven on his tombstone, "cor cordium"—the heart of hearts. Dreadfully mistaken as he was in his principles, he was no less the soul of genius than the model of a true heart and of pure intentions. Let who will cast reproach upon his memory, I believe, for one, that his errors were of the kind most venial in the eye of Heaven, and I read, almost like a prophesy, the last lines of his elegy on one he believed had gone before him to a happier world:
"Burning through the inmost veil of heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."
On the second terrace of the declivity, are ten or twelve graves, two of which bear the names of Americans who have died in Rome. A portrait carved in bas-relief, upon one of the slabs, told me, without the inscription, that one whom I had known was buried beneath.[9] The slightly rising mound was covered with small violets, half hidden by the grass. It takes away from the pain with which one stands over the grave of an acquaintance or a friend, to see the sun lying so warm upon it, and the flowers springing so profusely and cheerfully. Nature seems to have cared for those who have died so far from home, binding the earth gently over them with grass, and decking it with the most delicate flowers.
A little to the left, on the same bank, is the new-made grave of a very young man, Mr. Elliot. He came abroad for health, and died at Rome, scarce two months since. Without being disgusted with life, one feels, in a place like this, a certain reconciliation, if I may so express it, with the thought of a burial—an almost willingness, if his bed could be laid amid such loveliness, to be brought and left here to his repose. Purely imaginary as any difference in this circumstance is, it must, at least, always affect the sick powerfully; and with the common practice of sending the dying to Italy, as a last hope, I consider the exquisite beauty of this place of burial, as more than a common accident of happiness.
Farther on, upon the same terrace, are two monuments that interested me. One marks the grave of a young English girl,[10] the pride of a noble family, and, as a sculptor told me, who had often seen and admired her, a model of high-born beauty. She was riding with a party on the banks of the Tiber, when her horse became unmanageable, and backed into the river. She sank instantly, and was swept so rapidly away by the current, that her body was not found for many months. Her tombstone is adorned with a bas-relief, representing an angel receiving her from the waves.