Pencillings by the Way Part 24

SUMMER WEATHER IN MARCH--BATHS OF CARACALLA--BEGINNING OF THE APPIAN WAY--TOMB OF THE SCIPIOS--CATACOMBS--CHURCH OF SAN SEBASTIANO--YOUNG CAPUCHIN FRIAR--TOMBS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIAN MARTYRS--CHAMBER WHERE THE APOSTLES WORs.h.i.+PPED--TOMB OF CECILIA METELLA--THE CAMPAGNA--CIRCUS OF CARACALLA OR ROMULUS--TEMPLE DEDICATED TO RIDICULE--KEATS'S GRAVE--FOUNTAIN OF EGERIA--THE WOOD WHERE NUMA MET THE NYMPH--HOLY WEEK.

The last days of March have come, clothed in suns.h.i.+ne and summer. The gra.s.s is tall in the Campagna, the fruit-trees are in blossom, the roses and myrtles are in full flower, the shrubs are in full leaf, the whole country about breathes of June. We left Rome this morning on an excursion to the "Fountain of Egeria." A more heavenly day never broke. The gigantic baths of Caracalla turned us aside once more, and we stopped for an hour in the shade of their romantic arches, admiring the works, while we execrated the character of their ferocious builder.

This is the beginning of the ancient Appian Way, and, a little farther on, sunk in the side of a hill near the road, is the beautiful doric tomb of the Scipios. We alighted at the antique gate, a kind of portico, with seats of stone beneath, and reading the inscription, "_Sepulchro degli Scipioni_" mounted by ruined steps to the tomb. A boy came out from the house, in the vineyard above, with candles, to show us the interior, but, having no curiosity to see the damp cave from which the sarcophagi have been removed (to the museum), we sat down upon a bank of gra.s.s opposite the chaste facade, and recalled to memory the early-learnt history of the family once entombed within.

The edifice (for it is more like a temple to a river-nymph or a dryad than a tomb) was built by an ancestor of the great Scipio Africa.n.u.s, and here was deposited the n.o.ble dust of his children. One feels, in these places, as if the improvisatore's inspiration was about him--the fancy draws, in such vivid colors, the scenes that have pa.s.sed where he is standing. The bringing of the dead body of the conqueror of Africa from Rome, the pa.s.sing of the funeral train beneath the portico, the n.o.ble mourners, the crowd of people, the eulogy of perhaps some poet or orator, whose name has descended to us--the air seems to speak, and the gray stones of the monument against which the mourners of the Scipios have leaned, seem to have had life and thought, like the ashes they have sheltered.

We drove on to the _Catacombs_. Here, the legend says, St. Sebastian was martyred and the modern church of St. Sebastiano stands over the spot. We entered the church, where we found a very handsome young capuchin friar, with his brown cowl and the white cord about his waist, who offered to conduct us to the catacombs. He took three wax-lights from the sacristy, and we entered a side door, behind the tomb of the saint, and commenced a descent of a long flight of stone steps. We reached the bottom and found ourselves upon damp ground, following a narrow pa.s.sage, so low that I was compelled constantly to stoop, in the sides of which were numerous small niches of the size of a human body. These were the tombs of the early Christian martyrs. We saw near a hundred of them. They were brought from Rome, the scene of their sufferings, and buried in these secret catacombs by the small church of, perhaps, the immediate converts of St. Paul and the apostles. What food for thought is here, for one who finds more interest in the humble traces of the personal followers of Christ, who knew his face and had heard his voice, to all the splendid ruins of the works of the persecuting emperors of his time! Most of the bones have been taken from their places, and are preserved at the museum, or enclosed in the rich sarcophagi raised to the memory of the martyrs in the Catholic churches. Of those that are left we saw one. The niche was closed by a thin slab of marble, through a crack of which the monk put his slender candle. We saw the skeleton as it had fallen from the flesh in decay, untouched, perhaps, since the time of Christ.

We crossed through several cross-pa.s.sages, and came to a small chamber, excavated simply in the earth, with an earthern altar, and an antique marble cross above. This was the scene of the forbidden wors.h.i.+p of the early Christians, and before this very cross, which was, perhaps, then newly selected as the emblem of their faith, met the few dismayed followers of Christ, hidden from their persecutors, while they breathed their forbidden prayers to their lately crucified Master.

We reascended to the light of day by the rough stone steps, worn deep by the feet of those who, for ages, for so many different reasons, have pa.s.sed up and down; and, taking leave of our capuchin conductor, drove on to the next object upon the road--the _tomb of Cecilia Metella_. It stands upon a slight elevation, in the Appian Way, a "stern round tower," with the ivy dropping over its turrets and waving from the embrasures, looking more like a castle than a tomb. Here was buried "the wealthiest Roman's wife," or, according to Corinne, his unmarried daughter. It was turned into a fortress by the marauding n.o.bles of the thirteenth century, who sallied from this and the tomb of Adrian, plundering the ill-defended subjects of Pope Innocent IV.

till they were taken and hanged from the walls by Brancaleone, the Roman senator. It is built with prodigious strength. We stooped in pa.s.sing under the low archway, and emerged into the round chamber within, a lofty room, open to the sky, in the circular wall of which there is a niche for a single body. Nothing could exceed the delicacy and fancy with which Childe Harold muses on this spot.

The lofty turrets command a wide view of the Campagna, the long aqueducts stretching past at a short distance, and forming a chain of n.o.ble arches from Rome to the mountains of Albano. Cole's picture of the Roman Campagna, as seen from one of these elevations, is, I think, one of the finest landscapes ever painted.

Just below the tomb of Metella, in a flat valley, lie the extensive ruins of what is called the "circus of Caracalla" by some, and the "circus of Romulus" by others--a scarcely distinguishable heap of walls and marble, half buried in the earth and moss; and not far off stands a beautiful ruin of a small temple dedicated (as some say) to _Ridicule_. One smiles to look at it. If the embodying of that which is powerful, however, should make a deity, the dedication of a temple to _ridicule_ is far from amiss. In our age particularly, one would think, the lamp should be relit, and the reviewers should repair the temple. Poor Keats sleeps in his grave scarce a mile from the spot, a human victim sacrificed, not long ago, upon its highest altar.

In the same valley almost hidden with the luxuriant ivy waving before the entrance, flows the lovely _Fountain of Egeria_, trickling as clear and musical into its pebbly bed as when visited by the enamored successor of Romulus twenty-five centuries ago! The hill above leans upon the single arch of the small temple which embosoms it, and the green soft meadow spreads away from the floor, with the brightest verdure conceivable. We wound around by a half-worn path in descending the hill, and, putting aside the long branches of ivy, entered an antique chamber, sprinkled with quivering spots of suns.h.i.+ne, at the extremity of which, upon a kind of altar, lay the broken and defaced statue of the nymph. The fountain poured from beneath in two streams as clear as crystal. In the sides of the temple were six empty niches, through one of which stole, from a cleft in the wall, a little stream, which wandered from its way. Flowers, pale with growing in the shade, sprang from the edges of the rivulet as it found its way out, the small creepers, dripping with moisture, hung out from between the diamond-shaped stones of the roof, the air was refres.h.i.+ngly cool, and the leafy door at the entrance, seen against the sky, looked of a transparent green, as vivid as emerald. No fancy could create a sweeter spot. The fountain and the inspiration it breathed into Childe Harold are worthy of each other.

Just above the fountain, on the crest of a hill, stands a thick grove, supposed to occupy the place of the consecrated wood, in which Numa met the nymph. It is dark with shadow, and full of birds, and might afford a fitting retreat for meditation to another king and lawgiver.

The fields about it are so thickly studded with flowers, that you cannot step without crus.h.i.+ng them, and the whole neighborhood seems a favorite of nature. The rich banker, Torlonia, has bought this and several other cla.s.sic spots about Rome--possessions for which he is more to be envied than for his purchased dukedom.

All the travelling world a.s.sembles at Rome for the ceremonies of the holy week. Naples, Florence, and Pisa, send their hundreds of annual visitors, and the hotels and palaces are crowded with strangers of every nation and rank. It would be difficult to imagine a gayer or busier place than this usually sombre city has become within a few days.

LETTER LVIII.

PALM SUNDAY--SISTINE CHAPEL--ENTRANCE OF THE POPE--THE CHOIR--THE POPE ON HIS THRONE--PRESENTING THE PALMS--PROCESSION--BISHOP ENGLAND'S LECTURE--HOLY TUESDAY--THE MISERERE--ACCIDENTS IN THE CROWD--TENEBRae--THE EMBLEMATIC CANDLES--HOLY THURSDAY--FRESCOES OF MICHAEL ANGELO--"CREATION OF EVE"--"LOT INTOXICATED"--DELPHIC SYBIL--POPE WAs.h.i.+NG PILGRIMS' FEET--STRIKING RESEMBLANCE OF ONE TO JUDAS--POPE AND CARDINALS WAITING UPON PILGRIMS AT DINNER.

Palm Sunday opens the ceremonies. We drove to the Vatican this morning, at nine, and, after waiting a half hour in the crush, kept back, at the point of the spear, by the Pope's Swiss guard, I succeeded in getting an entrance into the Sistine chapel. Leaving the ladies of the party behind the grate, I pa.s.sed two more guards, and obtained a seat among the cowled and bearded dignitaries of the church and state within, where I could observe the ceremony with ease.

The Pope entered, borne in his gilded chair by twelve men, and, at the same moment, the chanting from the Sistine choir commenced with one long, piercing note, by a single voice, producing the most impressive effect. He mounted his throne as high as the altar opposite him, and the cardinals went through their obeisances, one by one, their trains supported by their servants, who knelt on the lower steps behind them.

The palms stood in a tall heap beside the altar. They were beautifully woven in wands of perhaps six feet in length, with a cross at the top.

The cardinal nearest the papal chair mounted first, and a palm was handed him. He laid it across the knees of the Pope, and, as his holiness signed the cross upon it, he stooped, and kissed the embroidered cross upon his foot, then kissed the palm, and taking it in his two hands, descended with it to his seat. The other forty or fifty cardinals did the same, until each was provided with a palm.

Some twenty other persons, monks of apparent clerical rank of every order, military men, and members of the Catholic emba.s.sies, followed and took palms. A procession was then formed, the cardinals going first with their palms held before them, and the Pope following, in his chair, with a small frame of palmwork in his hands, in which was woven the initial of the Virgin. They pa.s.sed out of the Sistine chapel, the choir chanting most delightfully, and, having made a tour around the vestibule, returned in the same order.

The ceremony is intended to represent the entrance of the Saviour into Jerusalem. Bishop England, of Charleston, South Carolina, delivered a lecture at the house of the English cardinal Weld, a day or two ago, explanatory of the ceremonies of the Holy week. It was princ.i.p.ally an apology for them. He confessed that, to the educated, they appeared empty, and even absurd rites, but they were intended not for the refined, but the vulgar, whom it was necessary to instruct and impress through their outward senses. As nearly all these rites, however, take place in the Sistine chapel, which no person is permitted to enter who is not furnished with a ticket, and in full dress, his argument rather fell to the ground.

With all the vast crowd of strangers in Rome, I went to the Sistine chapel on _Holy Tuesday_, to hear the far-famed _Miserere_. It is sung several times during the holy week, by the Pope's choir, and has been described by travellers, of all nations, in the most rapturous terms.

The vestibule was a scene of shocking confusion, for an hour, a constant struggle going on between the crowd and the Swiss guard, amounting occasionally to a fight, in which ladies fainted, children screamed, men swore, and, unless by force of contrast, the minds of the audience seemed likely to be little in tune for the music. The chamberlains at last arrived, and two thousand people attempted to get into a small chapel which scarce holds four hundred. Coat-skirts, torn ca.s.socks, hats, gloves, and fragments of ladies' dresses, were thrown up by the suffocating throng, and, in the midst of a confusion beyond description, the mournful notes of the _tenebrae_ (or lamentations of Jeremiah) poured in full volume from the choir. Thirteen candles burned in a small pyramid within the paling of the altar, and twelve of these, representing the apostles, were extinguished, one by one (to signify their desertion at the cross), during the singing of the _tenebrae_. The last, which was left burning, represented the mother of Christ. As the last before this was extinguished, the music ceased.

The crowd had, by this time, become quiet. The twilight had deepened through the dimly-lit chapel, and the one solitary lamp looked lost at the distance of the altar. Suddenly the _miserere_ commenced with one high prolonged note, that sounded like a wail; another joined it, and another and another, and all the different parts came in, with a gradual swell of plaintive and most thrilling harmony, to the full power of the choir. It continued for perhaps half an hour. The music was simple, running upon a few notes, like a dirge, but there were voices in the choir that seemed of a really supernatural sweetness. No instrument could be so clear. The crowd, even in their uncomfortable positions, were breathless with attention, and the effect was universal. It is really extraordinary music, and if but half the rites of the Catholic church had its power over the mind, a visit to Rome would have quite another influence.

The candles were lit, and the motley troop of cardinals and red-legged servitors pa.s.sed out. The harlequin-looking Swiss guard stood to their tall halberds, the chamberlains and mace-bearers, in their ca.s.sock and frills, took care that the males and females should not mix until they reached the door, the Pope disappeared in the sacristy, and the gay world, kept an hour beyond their time, went home to cold dinners.

The ceremonies of _Holy Thursday_ commenced with the ma.s.s in the Sistine chapel. Tired of seeing genuflections, and listening to a mumbling of which I could not catch a syllable, I took advantage of my privileged seat, in the Amba.s.sador's box, to lean back and study the celebrated frescoes of Michael Angelo upon the ceiling. A little drapery would do no harm to any of them. They ill.u.s.trate, mainly, pa.s.sages of scripture history, but the "creation of Eve," in the centre, is an astonis.h.i.+ngly fine representation of a naked man and woman, as large as life; and "Lot intoxicated and exposed before his two daughters," is about as immodest a picture, from its admirable expression as well as its nudity, as could easily be drawn. In one corner there is a most beautiful draped figure of the _Delphic Sybil_--and I think this bit of heathenism is almost the only very decent part of the Pope's most consecrated chapel.

After the ma.s.s, the host was carried, with a showy procession, to be deposited among the thousand lamps in the Capella Paolina, and, as soon as it had pa.s.sed, there was a general rush for the room in which the Pope was to _wash the feet of the pilgrims_.

Thirteen men, dressed in white, with sandals open at the top, and caps of paper covered with white linen, sat on a high bench, just under a beautiful copy of the last supper of Da Vinci, in gobelin tapestry. It was a small chapel, communicating with the Pope's private apartments.

Eleven of the pilgrims were as vulgar and brutal-looking men as could have been found in the world; but of the two in the centre, one was the personification of wild fanaticism. He was pale, emaciated, and abstracted. His hair and beard were neglected, and of a singular blackness. His lips were firmly set in an expression of severity. His brows were gathered gloomily over his eyes, and his glances, occasionally sent among the crowd, were as glaring and flas.h.i.+ng as a tiger's. With all this, his countenance was lofty, and if I had seen the face on canvas, as a portrait of a martyr, I should have thought it finely expressive of courage and devotion. The man on his left wept, or pretended to weep, continually; but every person in the room was struck with his extraordinary resemblance to _Judas_, as he is drawn in the famous picture of the Last Supper. It was the same marked face, the same treacherous, ruffian look, the same style of hair and beard, to a wonder. It is possible that he might have been chosen on purpose, the twelve pilgrims being intended to represent the twelve apostles of whom Judas was one--but if accidental, it was the most remarkable coincidence that ever came under my notice. He looked the hypocrite and traitor complete, and his resemblance to the Judas in the picture directly over his head, would have struck a child.

The Pope soon entered from his apartments, in a purple stole, with a cape of dark crimson satin, and the mitre of silver-cloth, and, casting the incense into the golden censer, the white smoke was flung from side to side before him, till the delightful odor filled the room. A short service was then chanted, and the choir sang a hymn. His Holiness was then unrobed, and a fine napkin, trimmed with lace, was tied about him by the servitors, and with a deacon before him, bearing a splendid pitcher and basin, and a procession behind him, with large bunches of flowers, he crossed to the pilgrims' bench. A priest, in a snow-white tunic, raised and bared the foot of the first. The Pope knelt, took water in his hand, and slightly rubbed the instep, and then drying it well with a napkin, he kissed it.

The a.s.sistant-deacon gave a large bunch of flowers and a napkin to the pilgrim, as the Pope left him, and another person in rich garments, followed, with pieces of money presented in a wrapper of white paper.

The same ceremony took place with each--one foot only being honored with a lavation. When his Holiness arrived at the "Judas," there was a general stir, and every one was on tip-toe to watch his countenance.

He took his handkerchief from his eyes, and looked at the Pope very earnestly, and when the ceremony was finished, he seized the sacred hand, and, imprinting a kiss upon it, flung himself back, and buried his face again in his handkerchief, quite overwhelmed with his feelings. The other pilgrims took it very coolly, comparatively, and one of them seemed rather amused than edified. The Pope returned to his throne, and water was poured over his hands. A cardinal gave him a napkin, his splendid cape was put again over his shoulders, and, with a paternoster the ceremony was over.

Half an hour after, with much crowding and several losses of foothold and temper, I had secured a place in the hall where the apostles, as the pilgrims are called after the was.h.i.+ng, were to dine, waited on by the Pope and cardinals. With their gloomy faces and ghastly white caps and white dresses, they looked more like criminals waiting for execution, than guests at a feast. They stood while the Pope went round with a gold pitcher and basin, to wash their hands, and then seating themselves, his Holiness, with a good-natured smile, gave each a dish of soup, and said something in his ear, which had the effect of putting him at his ease. The table was magnificently set out with the plate and provisions of a prince's table, and spite of the thousands of eyes gazing on them, the pilgrims were soon deep in the delicacies of every dish, even the lachrymose Judas himself, eating most voraciously. We left them at their dessert.

LETTER LIX.

SEPULCHRE OF CAIUS CESTIUS--PROTESTANT BURYING GROUND--GRAVES OF KEATS AND Sh.e.l.lEY--Sh.e.l.lEY'S LAMENT OVER KEATS--GRAVES OF TWO AMERICANS--BEAUTY OF THE BURIAL PLACE--MONUMENTS OVER TWO INTERESTING YOUNG FEMALES--INSCRIPTION ON KEATS' MONUMENT--THE STYLE OF KEATS' POEMS--GRAVE OF DR. BELL--RESIDENCE AND LITERARY UNDERTAKINGS OF HIS WIDOW.

A beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet high, built into the ancient wall of Rome, is the proud _Sepulchre of Caius Cestius_. It is the most imperishable of the antiquities, standing as perfect after eighteen hundred years as if it were built but yesterday. Just beyond it, on the declivity of a hill, over the ridge of which the wall pa.s.ses, crowning it with two mouldering towers, lies the _Protestant burying-ground_. It looks toward Rome, which appears in the distance, between Mount Aventine and a small hill called Mont Testaccio, and leaning to the southeast, the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the gra.s.s and wild flowers are there the earliest and tallest of the Campagna. I have been here to-day, to see the graves of _Keats_ and _Sh.e.l.ley_. With a cloudless sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor Sh.e.l.ley, and read his own lament over Keats, who sleeps just below, at the foot of the hill. The cemetery is rudely formed into three terraces, with walks between, and Sh.e.l.ley's grave and one other, without a name, occupy a small nook above, made by the projections of a mouldering wall-tower, and crowded with ivy and shrubs, and a peculiarly fragrant yellow flower, which perfumes the air around for several feet. The avenue by which you ascend from the gate is lined with high bushes of the marsh-rose in the most luxuriant bloom, and all over the cemetery the gra.s.s is thickly mingled with flowers of every die. In his preface to his lament over Keats, Sh.e.l.ley says, "he was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the ma.s.sy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome." It is an open s.p.a.ce among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. "_It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place._" If Sh.e.l.ley had chosen his own grave at the time, he would have selected the very spot where he has since been laid--the most sequestered and flowery nook of the place he describes so feelingly. In the last verses of the elegy, he speaks of it again with the same feeling of its beauty:--

"The spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, A light of laughing flowers along the gra.s.s is spread.

"And gray walls moulder round, on which dull time Feeds like slow fire upon a h.o.a.ry brand: And one keen pyramid, with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and _beneath A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched, in heaven's smile, their camp of death_, Welcoming him we lose, with scarce extinguished breath.

"Here pause: these graves are all _too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each_."

Sh.e.l.ley 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 gra.s.s. 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 gra.s.s, 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 circ.u.mstance 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 n.o.ble 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.

The other is the grave of a young lady of twenty, who was at the baths of Lucca, last summer, in pursuit of health. She died at the first approach of winter. I had the melancholy pleasure of knowing her slightly, and we used to meet her in the winding path upon the bank of the romantic river Lima, at evening, borne in a sedan, with her mother and sister walking at her side, the fairest victim consumption ever seized. She had all the peculiar beauty of the disease, the transparent complexion, and the unnaturally bright eye, added to features cast in the clearest and softest mould of female loveliness.

She excited general interest even among the gay and dissipated crowd of a watering place; and if her sedan was missed in the evening promenade, the inquiry for her was anxious and universal. She is buried in a place that seems made for such as herself.

We descended to the lower enclosure at the foot of the slight declivity. The first grave here is that of _Keats_. The inscription on his monument runs thus: "_This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet, who, on his death-bed, in the bitterness of his heart at the malicious power of his enemies, desired these words to be engraved on his tomb_: HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRITTEN IN WATER."

He died at Rome in 1821. Every reader knows his history and the cause of his death. Sh.e.l.ley says, in the preface to his elegy, "The savage criticism on his poems, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in a rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted." Keats was, no doubt, a poet of very uncommon promise. He had all the wealth of genius within him, but he had not learned, before he was killed by criticism, the received, and, therefore, the best manner of producing it for the eye of the world. Had he lived longer, the strength and richness which break continually through the affected style of Endymion and Lamia and his other poems, must have formed themselves into some n.o.ble monuments of his powers. As it is, there is not a poet living who could surpa.s.s the material of his "Endymion"--a poem, with all its faults, far more full of beauties. But this is not the place for criticism. He is buried fitly for a poet, and sleeps beyond criticism now. Peace to his ashes!

Close to the grave of Keats is that of Dr. Bell, the author of "Observations on Italy." This estimable man, whose comments on the fine arts are, perhaps, as judicious and high-toned as any ever written, has left behind him, in Naples (where he practised his profession for some years), a host of friends, who remember and speak of him as few are remembered and spoken of in this changing and crowded portion of the world. His widow, who edited his works so ably and judiciously, lives still at Naples, and is preparing just now a new edition of his book on Italy. Having known her, and having heard from her own lips many particulars of his life, I felt an additional interest in visiting his grave. Both his monument and Keats's are almost buried in the tall flowering clover of this beautiful place.