The next entry of interest, while rather gruesome, seems to be worth recording.

“Wednesday, September 1. Morning painting.  In the afternoon took a ride round the suburbs and visited the Campo Santo.  The Campo Santo is the public burial-place.  It is a large square enclosure having high walls at the sides and open at the top.  It contains three hundred and sixty vaults, one of which is opened every day to receive the dead of that day, and is not again opened until all the others in rotation have been opened.

“As we entered the desolate enclosure the only living beings were three miserable-looking old women gathered together upon the stone of one of the vaults.  They sat as if performing some incantation, mumbling their prayers and counting their beads; and one other of the same fraternity, who had been kneeling before a picture, left her position as we entered and knelt upon another of the vaults, where she remained all the time we were present, telling her beads.

“At the farther end of the enclosure was a large portable lever to raise the stones which covered the vaults.  Upon the promise of a few grains the stone of the vault for the day was raised, and, with the precaution of holding our kerchiefs to our noses, we looked down into the dark vault.  Death is sufficiently terrible in itself, and the grave in its best form has enough of horror to make the stoutest heart quail at the thought, but nothing I have seen or read of can equal the Campo Santo for the most loathsome and disgusting mode of burial.  The human, carcasses of all ages and sexes are here thrown in together to a depth of, perhaps, twenty feet, without coffins, in heaps, most of them perfectly naked, and left to corrupt in a mass, like the offal from a slaughter house.  So disgusting a spectacle I never witnessed.  There were in sight about twenty bodies, men, women, and children.  A child of about six years, with beautiful fair hair, had fallen across the body of a man and lay in the attitude of sleeping.

“But I cannot describe the positions of all without offence, so I forbear.  We were glad to turn away and retrace our steps to our carriage.  Never, I believe, in any country, Christian or pagan, is there an instance of such total want of respect for the remains of the dead.”

[Illustration:  DE WITT CLINTON Painted by Morse.  Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art]

On September 5, he again reverts to the universal plague of beggars in Italy:—­

“In passing through the country you may not take notice of a pretty child or seem pleased with it; so soon as you do the mother will instantly importune you for ‘qualche cosa’ for the child.  Neither can you ask for a cup of cold water at a cottage door, nor ask the way to the next village, nor even make the slightest inquiry of a peasant on any subject, but the result will be ‘qualche cosa, signore.’  The first act which a child is taught in Italy is to hold out its hand to beg.  Children too young to speak I have seen holding out their little hands for that purpose, and so mechanical is this action that I have seen, in one instance, a boy of nine years nodding in his sleep and yet at regular intervals extending his hand to beg.  Begging is here no disgrace; on the contrary, it is made respectable by the customs of the Church.”