Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/69

51 There is stone upon stone, tomb upon tomb, monument upon monument, and between them wherever you turn your eye, syringa-trees and bushes. From among broken rocks, from dark corners of tombs and sarcophagi, from the hollows of decayed stones, stems, sometimes winding like serpents, make their way out into space and spread into thick bushy crowns, which form a wealth of green and shady arcades of branches descending from above to the rotten tombstones, and to the damp clay of the ground which is overgrown by a monotonous sickly yellowish green.

And in the mysterious half-light of these natural arcades and bowers, under the roof of the syringas and in the greenish glimpses of sunbeams piercing their way through the branches of the thicket, we behold the red, gray or black outlines of the larger tombstones changing and varying with every breath of wind that blows over these dwellings of the dead. And under these higher tombs there is a medley of smaller grave stones, some of them much inclined to the ground, others completely turned over and lying flat, the higher monuments are not unlike venerable forms of olden patriarchs, beaten down and praying over grass-grown graves of thousands and thousands of men, long forgotten amongst their own people.

Here and there rain-beaten symbols proclaim even now to which tribe of Israel the man or woman belonged, who rest in their eternal sleep beneath these crumbling stones. This symbol of uplifted hands on the burst and weather beaten red marble tells us that it was a member of the house of Aaron, who was laid to rest here, then again the simply wrought form of a can signifies the temple of Gad, one of the Levites, while the sign of a lion is the symbol of the tribe of Juda, and the roughly hewn form of a bunch of grapes means an Israelite generally. We here find tombs of men of whose importance in their time neither history nor old cemetery-legends know anything. In a stone circle of thirty-three tombstones; those of his disciples, we see the sarcophagus of the famous rabbi Jehuda ben Bezulel Loew, a man of science and reputed sorcerer whose name is not forgotten in the tales of Old Prague at the present day. And here we see the dark tomb of the renowned cabbalist Aaron Spisa and not far from it a beautiful marble *