Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/276

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

MONUMENTS. 251

while two bas-reliefs, in bronze, represent, one his fable of the wolf and stork, the other that of the wolf and lamb. Parmentier, to whom France owed the general cultivation of the potato, has an elegant mon ument, and Denon, the traveller, a pedestal surmounted by his statue, in bronze. Deeply shaded by lime trees, is a tomb in the form of a cottage, where reposes Fred eric Mestezart, the beloved pastor of a church in Geneva ; and the Russian Countess Demidoff is inter red beneath a superb temple of the richest white mar ble, supported by ten columns, having in the interior a recumbent statue on an altar-tomb, with her arms and coronet. From the tomb of La Place rises an obelisk, crowned with an urn, and ornamented by a star and palm branches, encircling inscriptions and eulogies on his works. A splendid sepulchral chapel, surmounted by a temple, is erected to the memory of General Foy, whose statue is represented in the act of haranguing the people. The military taste of France is seen in the pomp and lavish expense with which the sepul chres of her chiefs are adorned. Marshal Davoust has a pyramid of granite ; Massena, one of white marble, twenty -one feet in height ; Le Fevre, a magnificent sarcophagus, where two figures of Fame are crowning his bust, and a serpent, the emblem of immortality, encircling his sword ; while Ney, the " bravest of the brave," sleeps unmarked, save by a single cypress.

It was not without surprise that I found so many from my own dear land, in this receptacle of the dead. Five States, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts,

�� �