Mausoleum

“ But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory. It is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement of a King’s palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls are made of--what? Marble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red porphyry--verde antique--jasper--oriental agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl--chalcedony--red coral--lapis lazuli! ”

“ The mausoleum is a most strange place, and as you enter mysterious voices seem to be whispering and clamouring together in the height of the dome; and when the door bangs, it is as if all the demons in the Inferno were let loose, and the shriekings and screamings around you are perfectly terrific. ”

“ He could conjure up pictures of the workmen dropping down dead from hunger and exhaustion who were engaged upon the erection of the loveliest mausoleum that the world has ever seen; more like an exquisite marble palace of fairy land than a resting place for the dead. Art had indeed attained its highest perfection in those far off days, the monuments of which the Eastern still gazes upon with pride and affection. ”

“ The ceilings, though sadly weather-worn, still show what a splendid and gorgeous mass of colouring and variegated patterns they were. The mausoleum is divided into a succession of courts opening one out of the other, and each is the death-chamber of one or more. Following the melancholy circle of the building, we see the narrow marble sarcophagi of brothers, sisters, a whole family, descending even to the second generation, who find their tombs within this narrow circle. ”

“ Under the vertical sun the melancholy phantom has vanished, the sweet sadness of the mausoleum has gone. The great marble table on which it stands is blinding. The light, reflected back and forth from the immense surfaces of white marble, is increased a hundred-fold in intensity, and some of the sides are like burning plaques. The incrustations seem to be sparks of magic fire; their hundreds of red flowers gleam like burning coals. The religious texts and the hieroglyphs, inlaid with black marble, stand out as if traced by the lightning-finger of a savage god. ”

“ To look on this beautiful earth when clad
In its robes of darkness; as it were
But one vast chamber of the dead:
A mighty mausoleum, where
Nature lay shrouded: And the tread
Of man gives out a hollow sound,
As from a tomb. ”

“ The spell of the mighty mausoleum still upon me, I pushed aside my easel and looked silently on the tomb before me, repeating to myself the line of Lord Bacon:
"Death openeth the gate to good fame
And extinguisheth envy." ”

“ I have spoken of the museum as the mausoleum of reality. But mausolea too, turn into museums; in losing their dead they, too, die and become a mere spectacle. Such is the melancholy fate of the Mausoleum of Theodoric the Great outside Ravenna, robbed of its imperial heretical bones by avenging Christian orthodoxy. Infinitely dreary this dead tomb when I saw it in the centre of its desolate plain, to which I had trudged through sodden marshland that would have been malarious in summer ”

“ There they lay, their faces upturned, many of them displaying all the placid peacefulness of death; but some grinned with horrible grimaces, and the eyes of some started from their heads, and there were teeth that seemed to be biting into the ice, and hands clenched as though the fierce activity of life pursued them beyond the veil. Yet the frightful mausoleum, the den of death, was pure in its atmosphere as a garden of snow, cool as grass after rain, silent as a tomb of the sea. ”

“ Waiting for the next spell of darkness I walked swiftly up to the protecting wall of the mausoleum, climbed over, and with the torch's aid found a yew branch on which I could sit and observe—whenever it was moonlight—the little dell that ran down to the burn wherein the shepherd and dog had been drowned. ”

“ Beneath it an enclosure of marble trellis-work surrounds the tomb of the princess and of her husband, the Emperor. Each corner of the mausoleum is covered by a similar though much smaller dome erected on a pediment pierced with graceful Saracenic arches. Light is admitted into the interior through a double screen of pierced marble, which tempers the glare of an Indian sky while its whiteness prevents the mellow effect from degenerating into gloom. ”

“ This inlaid flower-work is quite in keeping with the general magnificence of the mausoleum, many of the flowers containing not less than twenty-five different stones, assorted shades of agate, carnelian, jasper, blood-stone, lapis lazuli, and turquoise. Ere leaving we put to test the celebrated echo; that beautiful echoing, that—"floats and soars overhead in a long, delicious undulation, fading away so slowly that you hear it after it is silent, as you see, or seem to see, a lark you have been watching, after it is swallowed up in the blue vault of heaven." ”

“ The whiteness is broken only by the fine color of the inlaid gems, by lines in black marble, and by delicately written inscriptions, also in black, from the Koran. Under the dome of the vast mausoleum a high and beautiful screen of open tracery in white marble rises around the two tombs, or rather cenotaphs of the emperor and his princess; and in this marvel of marble the carving has advanced from the old geometrical patterns to a trellis-work of flowers and foliage, handled with great freedom and spirit. ”

“ I mourn to see such spacious tombs stand empty when there are so many living Magnificences whom they would fit to a span. Very proper was it to bury Beatrice, the mother of Matilda, in the sarcophagus of a Pagan hero. Mausolea no more than palaces should remain untenanted. Let them be turned into orts and castles, an you will, like Hadrian’s Tomb into Sant’ Angelo, or into circuses, like the Mausoleum of Augustus—sweet are the uses of Magnificence—but to keep them standing idle when there must be so many Magnificences in quest of a family sepulchre is a crime against America. ”

“ Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown, Some rogue to reputation all unknown— Men's backs being turned—should lift his thieving hand, Efface your name and substitute his own. Whose then would be the monument? To whom Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom, Your very name forgotten—ah, my friend, The name is all that's rescued by the tomb. For memory of worth and work we go To other records than a stone can show. These lacking, naught remains; with these The stone is needless for the world will know. Then build your mausoleum if you must, And creep into it with a perfect trust ”

“ I had been sent by my New York employers to superintend a branch of their business in a southern city. On the evening of a brilliant Sabbath, as I walked musingly through the cemetery, where thousands of the city's dead had found a calm and sequestered resting place, my attention was drawn to a monumental structure, the character and symbolism of which defied my comprehension. On a grassy mound, in a grove of oak trees, almost concealing it from observation, rose a mausoleum of dark stone, which at the first glance I conjectured to represent a Druidical temple. ”

“ I heard a voice, faint, sweet—such a voice as we hear when dead loves visit us in dreams:
"Thou hast kissed me: the compact is sealed forever."
And raising my eyes once more I saw that all the seats were graves and all the white dresses shrouds. Above me a light still shone in the blue roof, but only the light of a white moon in the eternal azure of heaven. White tombs stretched away in weird file to the verge of the horizon; where it had seemed to me that I beheld a play, I saw only a lofty mausoleum; and I knew that the perfume of the night was but the breath of flowers dying upon the tombs! ”

“ Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancient yew-trees, and before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a building evidently designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline, with the blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced with an iron rail, party-gilt.
The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightened almost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which the aspect of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made. ”

“ All that must now be thought of, is how to deceive the commander of the believers; and I am of opinion, that you should immediately cause a wooden image resembling a dead body to be carved. We will shroud it up in linen, and when shut up in a coffin, it shall be buried in some part of the palace; you shall then immediately cause a marble mausoleum to be built, in the form of a dome, over the burial place, and erect a tomb, which shall be covered with embroidered cloth, and set about with great candlesticks and large wax tapers. ”

“ In the centre of it is a marble mausoleum,—a pyramidal structure with small figures and masses of white carvings which taper skyward, terminating in gilt tips. Scattered about under the cedars are crumbling old temples, built long ago to the memory of this holy man, enclosing in their obscurity a whole population of gilded idols that are turning to dust. Just outside, the cindery soil where no one ever walks, is strewn with the resinous cones from the trees, [281] and with the black feathers of the crows, who inhabit this silent place by the hundreds. ”

“ The tomb of Altamsh, who built the mosque, and the one remaining gate of the court declare the scale of ornamentation that once covered all these crumbled walls and arches. Every inch of the roofless tomb is covered with carved ornament,—inscriptions, traceries, arabesques, and geometrical designs—the most ornamented mausoleum in India. ”

“ I was never more serious in my life. This speckled travesty, this photographic mummy, is but one example out of many. I do not know whether other homes resemble ours in the same tendency towards the mausoleum. ”

“ This interesting monument appears to have been ornamented with equal care and richness on every side, but its decorations have not enabled any of the numerous antiquaries who have hitherto examined it to throw any light on its origin; and the destruction of its architecture must have caused that of its inscription, if, indeed, it ever bore one.
The mausoleum is even more curious than the arch, as being the only building of a similar character of architecture to be seen. ”

“ The dome is either stuccoed, or covered with tiles of coloured porcelain. The colours retain their brilliancy to this hour, and many of the ornaments, and extracts from the Koran, raised on a purple ground, produce a singular and admirable effect. Near to each mausoleum stands a mosque, where religious offices were performed. Formerly these Tombs enjoyed the privileges of a sanctuary, food was distributed from them to the poor, they were encircled by spacious gardens, the floors were all richly carpeted, the tumuli spread with embroidered satin, and shadowed by canopies of the same material. ”

“ The mausoleum is decorated, both outside and in, with plaster and mosaic, and the floor is laid with black-and-white marble stars ; marble appears in much of the other decoration, and the dome is overlaid with the same material. ”

“ What a people they must have been, the folk who built the Lycian tombs, you can see best when you are half-way down the steps into the Mausoleum room, where lie the tremendous fragments of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world—the tomb that his wife and sister built for Mausolos, Prince of Caria, in a little town in Asia Minor some 2275 years ago. ”

“ His mausoleum, to which we will go next, is one of the noblest monuments on this plain;" and the carriages proceeded to it.
It is a mass of white marble and red sandstone. It has a fine dome, around which cluster several smaller structures, such as we should call cupolas in America or England. Under the great dome in the building is a plain tombstone, beneath which are the remains of the first of the Mogul emperors. The mausoleum is placed on an esplanade, like the great mosque in the city. The sides present a vast display of pointed arches, and its shape on the ground is quite irregular. ”

“ I should have expected a man who had such a taste for building to have designed a mausoleum for himself.’
‘Well, I’ve never noticed anything of the kind you mention; and, in fact, come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that his resting-place is within our boundaries at all: that he lays in the vault I’m pretty confident is not the case. ”

“ After the volumes of eloquence which have poured forth on this subject, it is dangerous even to mention the tomb. A modern traveller, in twelve lines, burdens the poor little island with the following titles,—it is a grave, tomb, pyramid, cemetery, sepulchre, catacomb, sarcophagus, minaret, and mausoleum! ”

“ MAUSOLEUM, the term given to a monument erected to receive the remains of a deceased person, which may sometimes take the form of a sepulchral chapel. The term cenotaph (κενός, empty, τάφος, tomb) is employed for a similar monument where the body is not buried in the structure. ”

“ The four sister arts, painting, music, eloquence and sculpture, were represented in deep distress, bewailing the loss of their protector. The first representation was supported by the four virtues, fortitude, temperance, justice, and religion. Above these, four angels, or genii, received the soul of the deceased, and seemed preening their purple wings to bear their precious charge to heaven. The mausoleum was adorned with a variety of little seraphs who supported an illuminated shrine, which was fixt to the top of the cupola. Nothing so magnificent or so well imagined was ever seen ”