CHAPTER XVIII.

A VISIT TO THE DEAD AND TO THE NEWLY-BORN.

January 12.-This afternoon there was a regular thaw; nevertheless I set out from the studio to the Cemetery, which is precisely at the other end of Munich. It was all sunshine over head and all sludge underfoot. It was a deplorable day for so long a walk; but my reason for choosing to visit the Cemetery to-day was because the corpse of the young lady, the friend of the Amsels, who died so suddenly, was lying at the Dead-House: and as I had heard a sad history regarding her death, and had long determined to pay a visit to the Dead-House, I went this afternoon spite of the mud.

Walking up the long pathway of the burial-ground, between the hundreds of crosses and monuments crowding thickly upon each other, with the bells tolling solemnly meanwhile from the Cemetery-chapel, I felt how, now entering the city of the dead, the joyous activity of the old part of Munich through which I had just passed stood forth in strange and striking contrast. Yet people thronged the broad pathway; crowds were hastening along,-men, women, and children, rich and poor. Whither were they bending their steps this miserable, dirty day? Now a funeral train encountered the throng, and the people stepped aside upon the spongy graves as it passed, bowing before the up raised crucifix.

When I neared the cloistered wall which separated the old from the new burial-ground, I perceived a still denser crowd. What could be the attraction? At once it flashed upon me that the attraction was the Dead-House,-the living were come to visit the dead!

And such was the case. Large windows, or rather doors, open out of the Dead-House into the cloisters. Here people congregate and gaze in at the corpses. I know not whether upon every day of the year the populace of the good city of Munich flocks to this awful spectacle. At all events, to-day there was a great crowd; and I do not believe that any corpse of extraordinary interest was exposed. I observed a considerable number of students among the crowd: as I pushed my way beneath the cloisters I found what had attracted them.

Jostled up against by men, women, and children, lay two corpses in their open coffins supported upon biers. I suppose they had been brought out for burial. However, there they were. One was the corpse of a student. He lay in his coffin dressed in his best clothes; his black dress-coat, black trowsers, patent-leather boots; a white cravat tied round his throat, white kid gloves upon his hands; he seemed dressed for a ball: but oh! his facethat statue-like expression upon the marble brow, the sunken white cheeks, the heavy eyelids darkened by the touch of death, the thick golden moustache curling over the livid lips! His tricolour corps-band crossed his breast. His hands were folded together, holding upon his heart a large bouquet of fragrant flowers, together with a small cross of black wood. Whilst I looked at him, a peasantwoman dipped a brush into a vase of holy-water standing near the coffin, and sprinkled the poor dead face with it. The other corpse was of an old lady. No one seemed to pay much attention to her. She had no flowers, not

even a wreath of artificial ones. She lay stiff and stark in a black silk dress; a prim lace cap was fastened around her rigid, old face; her feet poked out of the coffin in a pair of stuff shoes tied on with broad sandals. There was something unusually affecting to me in these poor, aged feet attired in the old-fashioned shoes; they evidently were the shoes she had saved up as her holiday shoes, her shoes for feasts and festivals, and now they were going down with her into the grave to the feast of worms. one but myself cast more than a glance at the poor lady, all eyes turned towards the handsome student; she was but a withered last year's kex; he was a vigorous young tree fallen in a sudden storm.

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The crowd jostled and pushed and talked and made itself very comfortable, greatly enjoying the spectacle.

"Eh! eh! that's a fine corpse !" remarked a jolly redfaced woman, wearing a golden swallow-tailed cap upon the very back of her curly black head. "But he does not look so handsome-does he, Lina? as when—”

The "when" was lost in a whisper into Lina's ear, and the jolly woman and smart girl passed on.

"Ach! and this is what we shall all come to sooner or later," moralized a ragged, shrivelled old man, with a blue nose and very wheezy voice.

"Only nineteen years of age! poor thing! poor thing! and she a Braut (betrothed girl), too!" sighed a gentle, motherly-looking woman, who might have been a baker's or miller's wife, gazing in through the window.

"Poor Marie !" spoke another voice: "to think of her lying there in the very ball-clothes in which she was to have danced with her bridegroom at last Thursday's ball!" And the speakers thrust their faces up to the window where many other faces were thrust.

On either side of the window hung a kind of "table of

contents" of the corpses lying behind the glass. The "table of contents" was framed, and decorated with emblems of mortality. The eager spectators consulted its columns with deep enjoyment, muttering to each other names, ages, and causes of death.

When a space at the window offered itself, I also looked through it. I breathed, or fancied I breathed, as I neared the window, the clammy, soul and body sickening odour of death,—that fearful odour which once breathed can never more be forgotten. Looking within, I saw a solemn room where various corpses were arranged upon biers, and where many empty biers were awaiting corpses.

In the centre of the room lay the statue-like figure of a young girl—the "Marie" of the speakers, and the Amsels' friend, I imagine. Her face had the pale yellow tint of ivory upon it; her brow was wreathed with myrtle-she was now the bride of death. She lay as if in a trance; her hands were crossed upon her breast; a delicate gauze veil flowed over her down to her feet. A grove of greenhouse flowers bloomed around her pillow, which was trimmed with exquisite lace; flowers bloomed in her hands; flowers bloomed at her feet, and tall waxen tapers rising out of bronze candelabra burnt and twinkled amid the leaves and blossoms.

There was a second dead woman's face, which was affecting and beautiful. The head lay slightly turned aside; the lips were crimson; the cheeks, scarcely sunken, were flushed in patches with a bright crimson tint, which looked rather of life than death. Her hair was jet black, and parted with the nicest care over a broad, low white brow. She also was covered with flowers: tender sprigs of passionflower and fern drooped over her. Close beside her in its little coffin lay an infant. And beyond these there were other rigid faces, old and young and middle-aged, glaring with a ghastly white from distant biers, all with stern

profiles set towards the ceiling; all with the wondrous print of death impressed upon them.

And without, the crowd murmured and crushed upon each other, and went and came in active enjoyment. Some very few might have real sorrow within their breasts; some very few might be touched by this vision of solemnity; but to the mass it was simply vulgar excitement and pastime. I felt a real sense of relief in the thought that, dying in England, no such curious gossiping crowd would gaze upon my corpse, or upon the faces of the dead dear to me. My very soul revolted and sickened at such desecration of the solemnity and the silence of death. If we have dead-houses in our new English cemeteries, surely admission to them will be alone granted to the friends of the deceased! The remembrance of this crowd of the living troubles my imagination far more than the remembrance of the calm, holy corpses. I cannot endure the thought that when the hour of death arrives for crowds of gossiping idlers will gather before the dead-house to gaze with unsympathising eyes upon the deserted temples of these great spirits! Such crowds assembled around the body of Schwanthaler, when it also was laid here.

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I passed out of the burial-ground, by the lofty portal which is crowned with its solemn statues, and walked along the banks of the Isar, looking up into the clear sky and listening to the rush of waters just released from the chains of ice which have bound the river for weeks. The waters rejoiced with glad voices, as if hymning their triumph in renewed life, and the sky had the word Immortality written upon it; but it was long before I could dismiss the painful impression which my visit to the dead-house had left upon me.