Though it is not distant from the ordinary landing and the few buildings
which line the shore, it is a place that, in itself, is no bad emblem of
a hopeless lot. Solitary, exposed equally to the hot airs of the south
and the bleak blasts of the Alps, frequently covered with the spray of
the Adriatic, and based on barren sands, the utmost that human art,
aided by a soil which has been fattened by human remains, can do, has
been to create around the modest graves a meagre vegetation, that is in
slight contrast to the sterility of most of the bank. This place of
interment is without the relief of trees: at the present day it is
uninclosed, and in the opinions of those who have set it apart for
heretic and Jew, it is unblessed. And yet, though condemned alike to
this, the last indignity which man can inflict on his fellow, the two
proscribed classes furnish a melancholy proof of the waywardness of
human passions and prejudice, by refusing to share in common the scanty
pittance of earth which bigotry has allowed for their everlasting
repose! While the Protestant sleeps by the side of the Protestant in
exclusive obloquy, the children of Israel moulder apart on the same
barren heath, sedulous to preserve, even in the grave, the outward
distinctions of faith. We shall not endeavor to seek that deeply-seated
principle which renders man so callous to the most eloquent and striking
appeals to liberality, but rest satisfied with being grateful that we
have been born in a land in which the interests of religion are as
little as possible sullied by the vicious contamination of those of
life; in which Christian humility is not exhibited beneath the purple,
nor Jewish adhesion by intolerance; in which man is left to care for the
welfare of his own soul, and in which, so far as the human eye can
penetrate, God is worshipped for himself.
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