Even our Campo Santo, if the
Lucchese had cared to look round the corner of the meeting-house at its
moss-grown head stones, could have had little to remind him of home,
though it has antiquity and a proper quaintness. But not for him, not for
them of his clime and faith, is the pathos of those simple memorial slates
with their winged skulls, changing upon many later stones, as if by the
softening of creeds and customs, to cherub's heads,--not for him is the
pang I feel because of those who died, in our country's youth exiles or
exiles' children, heirs of the wilderness and toil and hardship. Could
they rise from their restful beds, and look on this wandering Italian with
his plaster statuettes of Apollo, and Canovan dancers and deities, they
would hold his wares little better than Romish saints and idolatries, and
would scarcely have the sentimental interest in him felt by the modern
citizen of Charlesbridge; but I think that even they must have respected
that Lombard scissors-grinder who used to come to us, and put an edge to
all the cutlery in the house.
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