is a simplicity, a touching faith, and even a sublimity, in the German expression, that far surpasses the Eastern poetry. The German cemetery is “God’s ground” (Gottes Acker).—God’s own peculiar and hallowed ground, to which He has recalled those whom He had sent forth upon their worldly mission, as their abiding place, until He shall please to summon them.[1] But the expression of “city” still strikes upon the memory here. It is a city of graves, where broad avenues, streets, and lanes divide and subdivide the dwelling-places of the dead. A main avenue leads up the centre: what may be called a boulevard sweeps, in similar breadth, along the outer walls; the streets and lanes intersect the plots of dwellings as ordinary streets and lanes, but with symmetrical regularity. These passages are nameless, it is true; but each bears at its corner a low numbered post, the especial mark of which is a sufficient direction to the dwelling to which a mourner may be bound. A city it is, once more, in its variety and distribution of building. The noblest monuments stand upon the broadest thoroughfares; the humbler graves are skirted by the narrower lanes. There are gorgeous chapels, sarcophagi, pillared crosses, and pyramids, with a magnificent mausoleum now and then rising in its marble pride above the rest. There are the lowly tumuli, marked by the plain black cross or wooden effigy, daubed with the conventional attributes of the grave. Along the outer boulevard are ranged the most costly monuments—the gorgeous chapels, with their ever-burning lamps—the artistic marbles—the temple and the statue. The great family charnel-houses of nobility increase in consequence and splendour as they approach the termination of each boulevard, and the great stone colonnade that skirts the entire upper end. In this it is again a city, where fashion has its favourite quarters, and wealth purchases rank and precedence even in the pride of death. Strikingly beautiful as are many of the specimens of monumental architecture in these “West-End” districts, the more hidden portions of the city may still lay claim to precedence in “the picturesque,” with their painted crosses and quaintly picked-out epitaphs. One attribute the last dwelling-places all have in common. Around all are gardens, greater or smaller—now filled with shrubberies, now only affording room for a few tiny plants. Everywhere hang the chaplets, woven of yellow, white, and green—everywhere lie scattered flowers, recently strewn—now fresh, now withered. Another peculiarity is as frequently to be found by the side of the humbler grave as on the splendid monument. Little miniatures of the deceased who lie below, are let into a frame, overhanging the sculptured or painted epitaphs—poor memorials indeed, sometimes, and rude remembrancers of a living face. But in this again, as in all “city” life, the wealthy have their privilege. Little windows, to be unlocked alone by private key, preserve the glazed portraits for them. Among some of the more lowly a wire grating affords a partial protection against the destructive ravages of weather upon these remembrancers; but in most the colours disappear, the features decay, and the feeble outline that remains, bears only the same ghastly resemblance to a pictured face that a skeleton does to a living body. On the portrait above the same process of decay is going on, as on the body of the once living original that rests below. Scope enough here for the moraliser!
It was with that “’bated breath” with which we converse in the sick man’s chamber, that I felt myself speaking, on first entering the “Cemetery at Munich,” as if fearful of disturbing those who slept that sleep which one sound alone shall disturb. A bell was tolling heavily as I passed the gates, from the further end of the ground. A slow and dreary procession was advancing down the middle avenue. A monotonous chant came with the tolling of the bell, along the air; and rows of burning torches sent up gusts of smoke, with flame invisible, into the bright sun-lit air. A funeral ceremony was just taking place. The crowd around the mourners and the priests was thick. Presently the procession turned slowly down an intersecting street; and the main avenue was once more clear. All was soon comparatively still. The sound of distant muttering alone was heard. Here and there, on advancing up the main street of tombs, a form might be seen kneeling on a grave, in prayer, or busied, with a basket, replacing faded flowers with fresh offerings, or watering the first roots of vegetation planted on a fresh-turned sod. Most of the visitors had been attracted by the funeral ceremony.
At the end of the ground was the long low building, already alluded to as the depository of the dead before interment. It extended with a curve to meet the upper colonnade, on either side. Several windows, and large glass doors in the centre, gave a view into various compartments within. The corpses—each on its bier—were numerous. All were decorated in life’s finest clothes, and generally strewn with flowers—the humbler, as the wealthier, in their best! A beautiful young girl, dressed in white satin, slept beneath a bower of roses. Children were there, with chaplets of white roses on their heads. A government official was arrayed in uniform, with all his orders on his breast. Aged females were decked out with gaudy caps, false curls upon their heads, and rouge upon their yellow waxen cheeks—an appalling mockery of life—a fantastic coquetry, hideous to see, even in the arms of death. Such was a constant custom, I was told. No one shuddered at it but the novice. There, too, lay my unfortunate friend, arrayed in his gay uniform of the Guards. Unchanged, but pallid, he looked the sculptured effigy of him I had known in life. It was all too much to look on with composure.
The city of tombs has its great holiday, like other cities. On “All Souls’ Day,” all Munich that has a friend or relative to mourn, flocks to the great Festival of the Dead, to adorn a tomb. On that day, amidst the thick mass of the unmeaning faces of the many of both sexes, and of every age, groups of interest now and then cross the visitor’s path. Here, a family of orphans, seeking, hand in hand, their parents’ grave—there, a widowed husband, bending his- ↑ Frieden Hof, “Court of Peace,” is another of the German designations for a cemetery.
