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the city lies the ancient burial ground, now long disused but still undisturbed, many acres of uneven land, covered so thickly with graves, and planted so closely with granite and sandstone slabs, that the paths will scarce allow two persons to walk side by side. The stones stand and lie in all conceivable positions, erect, slanting at every angle, prostrate upon the earth or upon others already fallen before them--two, three, and even four upon a grave, where generations of men have been buried one upon the other--stones large and small, covered with deep-cut inscriptions in the Hebrew character, bearing the sculpture of two uplifted hands, wherever the Kohns, the children of the tribe of Aaron, are laid to rest, or the gracefully chiselled ewer of the Levites. Here they lie, thousands upon thousands of dead Jews, great and small, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, neglected individually, but guarded as a whole with all the tenacious determination of the race to hold its own, and to preserve the sacredness of its dead. In the dim light of the winter's afternoon it is as though a great army of men had fallen fighting there, and had been turned to stone as they fell. Rank upon rank they lie, with that irregularity which comes of symmetry destroyed, like columns and files of soldiers shot down in the act of advancing. And in winter, the gray light falling upon the untrodden snow throws a pale reflection upwards against each stone, as though from the myriad sepulchres a faintly luminous vapour were rising to the outer air. Over all, the rugged brushwood and the stunted trees intertwine their leafless branches and twigs in a thin, ghostly network of gray, that clouds the view of the farther distance without interrupting it, a forest of shadowy skeletons clasping fleshless, bony hands one with another, from grave to grave, as far as the eye can see. The stillness in the place is intense. Not a murmur of distant life from the surrounding city disturbs the silence. At rare intervals a strong breath of icy wind stirs the dead branches and makes them crack and rattle against the gravestones and against each other as in a dance of death. It is a wild and dreary place. In the summer, indeed, the thick leafage lends it a transitory colour and softness, but in the depth of winter, when there is nothing to hide the nakedness of truth, when the snow lies thick upon the ground and the twined twigs and twisted trunks scarce cast a trace
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