only in the matter of that awful ghost “with eyes as big as tea-saucers,” which Giles and Joan had seen one misty night. It had no analogy whatever with the suburban cemeteries of recent construction, and the picturesque and highly-ornamented burial-grounds of continental cities.
Long before suburban cemeteries were known in England, or if known, in rare instances, only looked upon askance, and even with reprobation, as savouring of dissent from the customary forms of the Church, and, consequently, even of impiety, my travelled memory had been filled with pictures of continental burial-grounds, all more or less, to my young eyes, brightened by a varnish of romance. Sometimes the vision that came back upon the mind, spread out before it a scene of long walks, shadowy avenues, bright flower-beds, and clustering shrubberies—all studded with a thousand monuments, varied in architecture, and decked out with all the wealth of a neighbouring capital—here gorgeous trophies, erected to the fame of a country’s heroes—here elaborate works of art—and each, grand or humble, in itself a history. At other times it came in the form of an embowered field, perched in rural loneliness in some secluded nook of a mountain side, or stretching along the margin of a quiet lake, and reflecting white crosses and duskily green cypresses, with ghostly dreaminess, in the waters. But of all these visionary pictures, none rises so distinctly to my mind as that of the “Cemetery at Munich.”
The peculiar circumstances under which I was first induced to visit it, caused it probably to strike more forcibly upon my imagination, and dwell more strongly in my memory, than any similar spot. For the first time in my young existence the contrast between animated, bounding life and sudden death had been rudely forced upon my mind. The spectre had risen, all at once, in the midst of a wreath of thoughtless gaiety. The skull had stared upon me unexpectedly in the midst of the flowers of the festive cup, as at the old Egyptian feasts. One step had hurried a friend, to whom I was sincerely attached, from the ball-room to the grave. With the horror of the shock still crushing me down, with a sorrow that I had not known till then, as a fresh tenant for my heart—it has often dwelt there since, and long—with a new-born terror at my first discovery that “even in life we are in death,” I was taken to the “Cemetery at Munich.” No wonder, then, that this first visit gave a hallowed and melancholy charm to the place, which no time, when I afterwards rambled there, could ever thoroughly wear out.
It came about in this wise. It was the early spring of—no matter now what year; it is a long, long time ago—the Carnival at Munich was drawing to its close. One of the last of a series of brilliant festivities was a grand ball at the palace. Amidst the light-hearted and animated who were revelling in the glittering scene, none seemed to wear a happier smile, or evidence a more lively sense of life’s enjoyment, than my poor friend Baron K. Young, rich, and handsome, sailing with the full tide of prosperous fortunes, with the first feeling of gratified expectation in his newly-acquired commission in the Guards still fresh upon him, and just affianced to the girl he loved, he seemed born to be Fortune’s favourite; and yet the fiend of evil had already been at work to undermine this brilliant structure of hope and pride. He had been dancing with his pretty bride—an engaged lady receives the title of “bride” in Germany—and as he passed me in the crowd I seized his hand to offer him my congratulations on his happy future.
“Don’t talk to me of the future just now,” he said.
“And why?” I asked.
“I will tell you to-morrow,” was his reply. “Perhaps,” he added, with a strangely melancholy smile, and grasped my hand; and so we parted.
The morrow came. The fineness of the morning tempted me out earlier than usual. All nature was bursting with new life under the first rays of a spring sun. The whole world seemed filled with the brightest hope. The more startling was the contrast in the haggard expression of my friend F, as he hurriedly crossed me in the English Garden,—pale as death, looking, as I observed with a laugh (sadly repented afterwards), as if he had “committed a murder.” He had seen one committed! My poor friend K had been shot that morning in a duel. F had been his second. The quarrel had originated in a trifling dispute on a subject equally trivial. The bright, hopeful being of last night’s ball-room was a corpse. It was horrible!
It was with some reluctance that, a few days afterwards, I acceded to a proposal to see the body of my unfortunate friend for the last time. It was laid out, I was told, in a building in the great cemetery, destined, by the law of the land, for the public exposure of the bodies of all persons of every degree until their interment. To me, this revelation of a custom common to most continental nations, but unknown to me until then, was singularly repulsive. I would not accept the thought that the remains of kindred and friends could possibly be exposed to the flippant remarks of careless observers; and I listened with singular unwillingness of conviction to the demonstration that this custom, instituted by “paternal governments” to prevent the possibility of the interment of the living (medical attendants and watchers being constantly employed in the building to observe minutely the state of the dead bodies committed to their charge), and to render vain any attempts to conceal an unnatural death from the eyes of justice, was one of great and notorious service. But curiosity, and perhaps a better feeling, prevailed. I went.
The “Cemetery at Munich” is situated at the extremity of one of the liveliest suburbs of the capital, its great gateway forming the vista of a long avenue of trees, that was in those days the customary promenade of the middling and lower classes on a Sunday. Far off, beyond, on the horizon, rise the rugged forms of the mountains of the Tyrol, breaking hard upon the sky on a clear day, now purple, now bluish grey. There is no mistaking the strait road onwards to the Gottes Acker. There is a poetical charm in the name given by the Orientals to their places of interment, “The City of the Silent.” But, to my mind, there