and taking down one of
them, said, 'This was Brother Desiderio Berro, who died at
forty--one of my best friends. I begged his head of his brethren
after his decease, and they gave it me. I put it in lime, and then
boiled it. Here it is, teeth and all, in excellent preservation. He
was the merriest, cleverest fellow I ever knew. Wherever he went,
he brought joy; and whenever any one was melancholy, the sight of
him was enough to make him cheerful again. He walked so actively,
you might have taken him for a dancer--he joked--he laughed--oh! he
was such a Frate as I never saw before, nor ever shall again!'

"He told me that he had himself planted all the cypresses in the
cemetery; that he had the greatest attachment to them and to his
dead people; that since 1801 they had buried fifty-three thousand
persons. In showing some older monuments, there was that of a Roman
girl of twenty, with a bust by Bernini. She was a princess
Bartorini, dead two centuries ago: he said that, on opening her
grave, they had found her hair complete, and 'as yellow as gold.'
Some of the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more
splendid monuments at Bologna; for instance:--

"Martini Luigi
Implora pace;

"Lucrezia Picini
Implora eterna quiete.

Can any thing be more full of pathos? Those few words say all that
can be said or sought: the dead had had enough of life; all they
wanted was rest, and this they _implore_! There is all the
helplessness, and humble hope, and deathlike prayer, that can arise
from the grave--'implora pace.'[34] I hope, whoever may survive
me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the
Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see those two
words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of
'pickling, and bringing me home to Clod or Blunderbuss Hall.' I am
sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix
with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive
me mad on my deathbed, could I suppose that any of my friends would
be base enough to convey my carcass back to your soil. I would not
even feed your worms, if I could help it.

"So, as Shakspeare says of Mowbray, the banished Duke of Norfolk,
who died at Venice (see Richard II.) that he, after