Alden's Cyclopedia of Universal Literature, Presenting Biographical and Critical Notices and Specimens from the Writings of Eminent Authors of All Ages and All Nations, Vol. 18 (Classic Reprint)

Book excerpt: Excerpt from Alden's Cyclopedia of Universal Literature, Presenting Biographical and Critical Notices and Specimens From the Writings of Eminent Authors of All Ages and All Nations, Vol. 18 At last we arrived at the place of graves. It was an acclivity of the mountain a small field surrounded by a fence, in one corner of which were erected many wooden crosses and a pile of sand, or rather of sandy, frozen clods, dug out with a pick-axe and cast upon the surrounding snow, indicated the spot of this new sepul ture. There was not a single marble erected, not a monument of brown stone; or epitaph; but the em blem of the cross denoted that it was the resting-place of the lowliest of the lowly - of the poor sons of Erin, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, who had, from time to time, in these distant regions, given up their lives to toil, to suffering, or to crime. But the mountain in which they were buried was itself a monu ment which, without any distinction, in a spot where all were equal, was erected equally for all. There is no memorial, even of the greatest, so good as the place in which they repose and when I looked upon the Sinai like peak which rose before us, I thought that these poor people had, in the depth of poverty, resorted to the very God of Nature to memorize their dead. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.