rather gruesome, seems to be worth
recording.

"_Wednesday, September 1._ Morning painting. In the afternoon took a ride
round the suburbs and visited the Campo Santo. The Campo Santo is the
public burial-place. It is a large square enclosure having high walls at
the sides and open at the top. It contains three hundred and sixty
vaults, one of which is opened every day to receive the dead of that day,
and is not again opened until all the others in rotation have been
opened.

"As we entered the desolate enclosure the only living beings were three
miserable-looking old women gathered together upon the stone of one of
the vaults. They sat as if performing some incantation, mumbling their
prayers and counting their beads; and one other of the same fraternity,
who had been kneeling before a picture, left her position as we entered
and knelt upon another of the vaults, where she remained all the time we
were present, telling her beads.

"At the farther end of the enclosure was a large portable lever to raise
the stones which covered the vaults. Upon the promise of a few _grains_
the stone of the vault for the day was raised, and, with the precaution
of holding our kerchiefs to our noses, we looked down into the dark
vault. Death is sufficiently terrible in itself, and the grave in its
best form has enough of horror to make the stoutest heart quail at the
thought, but nothing I have seen or read of can equal the Campo Santo for
the most loathsome and disgusting mode of burial. The human, carcasses of
all ages and sexes are here thrown in together to a depth of, perhaps,
twenty feet, without coffins, in heaps, most of them perfectly naked, and
left to corrupt in a mass, like the offal from a slaughter house. So
disgusting a spectacle I never witnessed. There were in sight about
twenty bodies, men, women, and children. A child of about six years, with
beautiful fair hair, had fallen across the body of a man and lay in the
attitude of sleeping.

"But I cannot describe the positions of all without offence, so I
forbear. We were glad to turn away and retrace our steps to our carriage.
Never, I believe, in any country, Christian or pagan, is there an
instance of such total want of respect for the remains of the dead."

[Illustration: DE WITT CLINTON
Painted by Morse. Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art]

On September 5, he again reverts to the universal plague of beggars in
Italy:--

"In passing through the country