University of Virginia Library

59. LETTER LIX.

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 passes, 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
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 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 grass is thickly mingled with flowers of every die.
In his preface to his lament over Keats, Shelley says,
“he was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery
of the protestants, under the pyramid which is the
tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now
mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of
ancient Rome. It is an open space 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 Shelley 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:—

m

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 prophecy, the last lines of his elegy on
one he believed had gone before him to a happier
world:—

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.

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 deathbed, 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. Shelley 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 noble monuments of his powers.
As it is, there is not a poet living who could surpass
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.