Already
do its fields of blooming sepulchres stretch far away on every side,
across the brow of the hills and the bend of the valleys; already are the
avenues which cross each other at every step in this domain of death, so
lengthened, that the weary stranger, from whatever point he comes, still
finds before him many a dreary mile of road between marshalled tombs and
mournful cypresses, ere he reaches his journey's seemingly receding end;
and yet, every year does this common patrimony of all the heirs to decay,
still exhibit a rapidly increasing size, a fresh and wider line of
boundary, and a new belt of young plantations, growing up between new
flower beds of graves.
"There, said I to myself, lie, scarcely one foot beneath the surface of a
swelling soil, ready to burst at every point with its festering contents,
more than half the generations whom death has continued to mow down for
nearly four centuries in the vast capital of Islamism. There lie, side by
side, on the same level, in cells the size of their bodies, and only
distinguished by a marble turban somewhat longer or deeper--somewhat
rounder or squarer--personages, in life, far as heaven and earth asunder,
in birth, in station, in gifts of nature, and in long laboured
acquirements.
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