Of all our visits to interesting places in this ancient city our excursion to the Campo Santo gave us the most pleasure. It is some three or four miles from the city: the weather continuing cold, we preferred walking. We went up the main street, through the valley at the foot of the snow-clad hills we had seen before, and in little more than an hour we arrived at the gates of the Cemetery. This Campo Santo is indeed most eloquently illustrative of loving reverence and remembrance of the dead, and is quite a museum of beautiful monumental statuary.
This burial-ground is a system of sheltered colonnades, where the dead are deposited in sarcophagi, resting on shelves on the inner walls, tier upon tier. Only the very poor people seem to be buried in the _common earth_, in the open spaces which lie before the colonnades, and these are crowded. It rather shocked us to see the gravedigger remove some bones from the ground and throw them into a kind of bin, which was there for the purpose, in order to make room for a new corpse. I thought, with Hamlet--
"Did these bones cost no more the breeding, but to play at loggats with them? Mine ache to think on't."
The colonnades are paved with marble, and are scrupulously clean. Some have exquisite monuments and statuary, the figures most eloquently expressive of tender feelings of both joy and sorrow. The draperies and lacework are wonderfully real. One we thought especially beautiful. The bereaved mourners are reluctant to part with their beloved relative and endeavour to detain him, but an angel gently leads him away; and he, though expressing love and sympathy for his friends, gladly follows his winged guide to a happier world above. Another portrays a little girl, tripping joyfully out from the tomb, over roses and other blossoming flowers. There are hundreds of others, full of deep pathos, works of Italy's greatest sculptors.
One tomb is said to have cost some £5000. The patriot Mazzini is buried here. At the highest point of the cemetery is a rotunda chapel, with very fine statuary of Moses and the prophets, Adam and Eve, and many other subjects.
There is an echo in this chapel that is wonderfully and unusually clear and distinct.