The Beautiful Porch Of The English Church, For Once Greek
And Not Gothic, Fronts Upon It, But The Dwindling Congregation Has No
Care Of It, And There Is No Fund To Keep It So Much As Free From Weeds
And Brambles And The Insidious Ivy Rending Its Monuments Asunder.
The
afternoon of our visit it was in the sole charge of a large, gray cat,
which, after feasting
Upon the favorite herb, lay stretched in sleep on
a sunny bed of catnip under the walls of a mansion near, at whose
windows some young girls looked down in a Sunday listlessness, as we
wandered about among the "tall cypresses, myrtles, pines,
eucalyptus-trees, oleanders, cactuses, huge bushes of monthly roses, a
jungle of periwinkles, sarsaparilla, wild irises, violets, and other
loveliest of wild flowers." On the forgotten tombs were the touching
epitaphs of those who had died in exile, and whose monuments are
sometimes here while their ashes lie in Florence or Rome, or wherever
else they chanced to meet their end. Among them were the inscriptions on
the graves of "William Magee Seton, merchant of New York," who died at
Pisa in 1803, and "Henry De Butts, a citizen of Baltimore, N. America,"
who died at Sarzana; with "James M. Knight, Esq., Captain of Marines,
Citizen of the United States of America," who died at Leghorn in 1802;
and "Thomas Gamble, Late Captain in the Navy of the United States of
America," who died at Pisa in 1818; and doubtless there were other
Americans whose tombs I did not see.
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