Waldie's Select Circulating Library Volume 10 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 Excerpt: ...if he would contemplate a scene to which the world probably can produce no parallel. Emerging from the all but interminable High street, whose projecting upper stories form a canopy above your head for nearly its whole length, you have on your left hand the plague hospital for the Franks, and on your right a stretch of higher land, which is the burial-ground of the Greeks. Here there is nothing to arrest vour steps; it is ill kept, and, were it not for the houses that surround it, would be dreary and desolate from its very disorder. The Greek is the creature of to-day--yesterday is blotted from his tablets. Having passed the grave-yard, the road widens into an esplanade, in front of an extensive block of building, erected by Sultan Selim as a cavalry barrack. It is painted rose colour, has a noble entrance, and possesses a look of order and regularity almost European. It is not until you descend the gentle declivity that slopes onward to the Grand Champs des Morts, that you discover the whole extent of the edifice, which is a quadrangle, having three fronts; its fourth side being devoted to a range of stabling. The road to Therapia and the "Sweet Waters" skirts the burial-ground; and the little Greek village or colony of St. Demetrius covers an opposite height The first plot of ground, after passing the barrack, is the grave-yard of the Franks; and here you are greeted on all sides with inscriptions in Latin: injunctions to pray for the souls of the departed; flourishes of French sentiment; calembourgs graven into the everlasting stone, treating of roses and rcine Marguerites; concise English records of births, deaths, ages, and diseases; Italian elaborations of regret and despair; and all the common places of an ordinary burial-ground. Along tho ...