ed with yellow skin, and hair that has
known the earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinning,
hideously repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as if
he had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhaps
is even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however,
these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view of
their position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. But
the cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes;
the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dusty
death; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality,
has grown as barren of the flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weeds
and grass. Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward gaze
to give us back our faith. Not here can we feel ourselves immortal,
where the very altars in these chapels of horrible consecration are
heaps of human bones.

THE BURIAL PLACE OF KEATS AND SHELLEY[24]

BY NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS

A beautiful pyramid, a hundred and thirteen feet high, built into the
ancient wall of Rome, is the proud "Sepulcher 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 passes,
crowning it with two moldering 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
south-east, the sun lies warm and soft upon its banks, and the grass 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 Shelley. With a
cloudless sky and the most delicious air ever breathed, we sat down upon
the marble slab laid over the ashes of poor Shelley, 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 Shelley's grave and one other, without a name, occupy a small nook
above, made by the projections of a moldering 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 mo