DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0551
chap, xxm.] CAMPANARI'S GARDEN AND TOMB. 443
youths, and graceful maidens—reclining on the lids of
their coffins, or rather on their festive couches—meeting
with fixed stony stare the astonishment of the stranger,
yet with a distinct individuality of feature and expres-
sion, and so life-like withal, that "like Pygmalion's statue
waking" each seenfs to be on the point of warming
into existence. Lions, sphinxes, and chimseras dire, in
stone, stand among them, as guardians of the place ; and
many a figure of quaint character and petrified fife, looks
down on you from the vine-shaded terraces, high above
the walls of the garden. It is as strange a place as may
well be conceived, and a lonely walk here by moonlight
would try weak nerves and lively imaginations.
In the garden wall is a doorway of Etruscan form and
moulding, surmounted by a cornice which bears the formula
" Ecasuthinesl " in Etruscan characters—all taken from
some tomb of Signor Campanari's excavation. The door
opens into what seems an Etruscan sepulchre, but is really
a cavern formed in imitation of the said tomb, and filled
with the identical sarcophagi and other articles found
therein, and arranged pretty nearly as they were dis-
covered. It is a spacious vaulted chamber, and contains
ten sarcophagi—a family group—each individual reclining
in effigy on his own coffin. It is a banqueting hall of the
dead; for they he here in festive attitude and attire, yet
in utter silence and gloom, each with a goblet in his hand,
from which he seems to be pledging his fellows. This
solemn carousal, this mockery of mirth, reminded me of
that wild blood-curdling song of Procter's—
" King Death was a rare old fellow—
He sat where no sun could shine ;
And he lifted his hand so yellow,
And poured out his cold-Mack wine!
Hurrah! hurrah !
Hurrah for the coal-black wine ! "
youths, and graceful maidens—reclining on the lids of
their coffins, or rather on their festive couches—meeting
with fixed stony stare the astonishment of the stranger,
yet with a distinct individuality of feature and expres-
sion, and so life-like withal, that "like Pygmalion's statue
waking" each seenfs to be on the point of warming
into existence. Lions, sphinxes, and chimseras dire, in
stone, stand among them, as guardians of the place ; and
many a figure of quaint character and petrified fife, looks
down on you from the vine-shaded terraces, high above
the walls of the garden. It is as strange a place as may
well be conceived, and a lonely walk here by moonlight
would try weak nerves and lively imaginations.
In the garden wall is a doorway of Etruscan form and
moulding, surmounted by a cornice which bears the formula
" Ecasuthinesl " in Etruscan characters—all taken from
some tomb of Signor Campanari's excavation. The door
opens into what seems an Etruscan sepulchre, but is really
a cavern formed in imitation of the said tomb, and filled
with the identical sarcophagi and other articles found
therein, and arranged pretty nearly as they were dis-
covered. It is a spacious vaulted chamber, and contains
ten sarcophagi—a family group—each individual reclining
in effigy on his own coffin. It is a banqueting hall of the
dead; for they he here in festive attitude and attire, yet
in utter silence and gloom, each with a goblet in his hand,
from which he seems to be pledging his fellows. This
solemn carousal, this mockery of mirth, reminded me of
that wild blood-curdling song of Procter's—
" King Death was a rare old fellow—
He sat where no sun could shine ;
And he lifted his hand so yellow,
And poured out his cold-Mack wine!
Hurrah! hurrah !
Hurrah for the coal-black wine ! "