The Ohio organ, of the temperance reform. (Cincinnati, [Ohio]) 1853-1854, 1853-06-17
a GRAVEYARD under a Church.

COnceZlone ! aye.fe.t ~ o.
From the church we descended to
the cemetery underneath, where one
6fithe most curious, and certainly the
most horrible sights ] have ever be-
held, met my eyes. Within four low
Yaulted chambers are kept the bones
of ten thousand monks.
When a member Of this fraternity
dies, he is buried in his coarse brown
robe, in the cemetery, the earth Of
which was brought from Jerusalem !;
but, after some months, his bones are
taken up and arranged in variety Of
ways about the walls Of the cemetery.
The skeletons Of the most eminen or
holyfathers are preserved entire, and
Teeline on couches Of skulls, or stand
IN bone-built inches, wearing the coarse
brown robes and cowls they lived and
died and were buried in, and holeing
Tosaries and crucifxes. All about
them are bones columns and altars
Of kulls--festooned with vertebr@,
finger and toe ioints--ribs made into
crosses--arm-bones and collar-bones
made into lamps Lleg-bones support
ing shelves Of shoulder.blades and
knce-pans--bones of all sorts srrang-
ed in all sorts Of emblemalical forms,
such as scythes, scales, hour-glasses.
On the ceiling overhead, in horrible
me ckery of frescoes Of smiling Cupids
and Ganymedes, small, shining skele-
tons grin down upon you, and seem
about to strike you dead. To the
robed skeletons in the inches some
dried flesh and portion Of skin adhere,
and from the chins Of two or three
yet depends q long grizzly beard.
1t was evidently expected, from the
position in which these defunct fathers
are placed, that they would wear
look Of devotion or pious meditation (;
but the attempt has not been altogeth-
er successful. Expression varies in
these death 'slheads quite as much as
in living faces. For instance, there is
one, who seems chuckling with sly
merriment under his worm-eaten cowl,
one who has a foxy look Of cruelty
and cunning-one who seems to have
died cursing, and one who seems to
have never died at all, but as he lies
stretched out, with his coWl shading
his face, his beard on his breast, and
his mouth open, looks simply like an
emaciated, masCerated old monk, sound
asleep and snoring.
y'1This underground cemetery is 50
small and ill-ventilated-tEe earth
above the buried monks seems SO
light, that one feels that the air must
be surcharged with pestilence and
death. Yet the monks perform mass
esthere, wander and mediate there,
breathe in the musty atmosphere Of
the bones of the long-departed ten
thousand, and the exhalations from
the uncoftined bodies OF the lately de-
parted ten. How strange it must be
Tor them to contemplate the certain
disposition Of their own poor remains,
their skulls labelled and packed in
arches, and their bones builded and
wreathed into ghastly ornaments !
Perhaps old friends talk to one anoth-
er in this wise You will see, broth
er Anselmo, that they do not scatter
my bones too much-you yourself
will place my skull where you can
= come and see it sometime" /"
,srd On one night in the year this GENE.
!, terry is illuminated. Can you ina
CINE q scene more grandly horrible |
+ From yellow lamps and swinging
chandeliers Of bones, the ghastly hght
graves and skeIetons--hash on pol
n ished skulls, and searching into thou
1 sands on thousands Of eyeless sock.
cts Think of the awfu; shadows
lurking in the arches and about the
inches where lie and stand tho dead
a..o,t robnd and cnwfed Th;nL