DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61894#0382
352
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. X.
vantage of being fumigated with incense and
sprinkled with holy water *.
It cannot but appear strange that a people so
dull and unenlightended as the Turks, should in
this respect show more sense and even more taste
than nations in every other respect their superiors.
Their cemeteries are in general out of the pre-
cincts of their cities, most commonly on a rising
ground, and always planted with cedars, cy-
presses, and odoriferous shrubs, whose deep ver-
dure and graceful forms bending to every breeze,
give a melancholy beauty to the place, and in-
spire sentiments very congenial to its destination.
I have seen some Christian cemeteries (as at
Brussels for instance) situate and laid out in the
same advantageous and picturesque manner, with
some additional precautions in the division, so
as to preclude the possibility of heaping bodies on
each other, or of crowding them indecently to-
gether. But even this arrangement is open to
improvements j and it is to be hoped that such
improvements will ere long be made by the wis-
dom of a British legislature.
* As holy water has always a considerable quantity of
salt mixed with it, its effect when sprinkled about a church
or room must be salubrious.
CLASSICAL TOUR
Ch. X.
vantage of being fumigated with incense and
sprinkled with holy water *.
It cannot but appear strange that a people so
dull and unenlightended as the Turks, should in
this respect show more sense and even more taste
than nations in every other respect their superiors.
Their cemeteries are in general out of the pre-
cincts of their cities, most commonly on a rising
ground, and always planted with cedars, cy-
presses, and odoriferous shrubs, whose deep ver-
dure and graceful forms bending to every breeze,
give a melancholy beauty to the place, and in-
spire sentiments very congenial to its destination.
I have seen some Christian cemeteries (as at
Brussels for instance) situate and laid out in the
same advantageous and picturesque manner, with
some additional precautions in the division, so
as to preclude the possibility of heaping bodies on
each other, or of crowding them indecently to-
gether. But even this arrangement is open to
improvements j and it is to be hoped that such
improvements will ere long be made by the wis-
dom of a British legislature.
* As holy water has always a considerable quantity of
salt mixed with it, its effect when sprinkled about a church
or room must be salubrious.