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A little farther on, but close at hand, is a cloister with beautiful marble columns and tombs, and a colossal wood-carved Calvary, and beside that a small and very rich chapel; indeed, so full is the little town of the undisturbed past, that to walk in it is like opening a missal of the Middle Ages, all emblazoned and illuminated with saints and warriors, and it is so clean, and so still, and so noble, by reason of its monuments and its historic color, that I marvel much no one has ever cared to sing its praises.
It had been Etruscan, it had been Latin, it had been Longobardo, it had been Borgian and Papal; through all these changes a fortified city, then a castellated town, then a walled village; and a village it now remained. It will never be more; before many generations pass it will probably have become still less; a mere tumulus, a mere honeycomb of buried tombs.
Upon a steep hill, situated about half a mile from the hotel, and bearing from it about south-east, stand the ruins of a well-built church, surrounded by a large grave-yard, thickly tenanted by the once citizens of Petersburg: numerous tombs, of a respectable and, indeed, venerable appearance, contribute to invest the spot with quite an Old-country character; and, viewed from the high stone wall which surrounds it, the setting sun is glorious.
On the present occasion the tombs were ornamented with wreaths of paper or silk of different colours, and three wax tapers were burning on each. Provisions, also, were either sent or brought, and placed as offerings on the tombs. The most opulent were distinguished from the rest by the richness of their viands fish, fruit, sweetmeats, and beverages.
This is a slab of Purbeck stone, 11 ft. in length and 3 ft. 10 ins in breadth. On the north and south sides of the altar are the tombs of Thomas, Lord West, and Lady Alice West, his mother. These tombs are of Purbeck marble and of a form by no means uncommon in the churches of Wessex.
"Bring offerings," says a pious text, "to thy father and thy mother who rest in the valley of the tombs; for such gifts are pleasing to the Gods, who will receive them as if brought to themselves. Often visit thy dead, so that what thou dost for them, thy son may do for thee."
The mosques are new, and offer but little in the way of architectural beauty, for the fanatical Wahhabi from Nejd swept over the island in 1801, and in their religious zeal destroyed the places of worship; and the extensive cemeteries still bear testimony to the ravages of these iconoclasts, with their ruined tombs and overturned headstones.
This distance however makes it certain that between S. Rocco and the city, excavation will bring to light other and yet older tombs along the road which leads up toward "l'antica porta S. Martino chiusa," and also in all probability rows of graves will be found along the present road to Cave. But the tombs give us the direction at least of the old road.
After she had us fairly started in our bewildering career on the tracks of Bacon and Shakespeare doing a sort of amateur detective work in the tombs, as it were and after she had induced the storekeeper to lay in a supply of health food which he finally fed to the chickens she turned her attention to our costumes.
Honore consents to be bishop, and here he sits in a throne, and has his book now grandly on his desk instead of his knees, and he directs one of his village curates how to find relics in a wood; here is the wood, and here is the village curate, and here are the tombs, with the bones of St. Victorien and Gentien in them. After this, St.
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